The Canadiens stayed ahead of the Bruins in the standings with a 2-1 win over the B’s Saturday night at the Bell Centre.

With the win, the Canadiens (38 games played) have 55 points to the Bruins’s 52 through 37 games. Saturday marked the fourth and final meeting between the two teams in the regular season, with the Canadiens taking three wins vs. Boston.

Montreal jumped out to a 2-0 lead thanks to goals from Alex Galchenyuk and Michael Ryder, with Daniel Paille scoring the Bruins’ only goal in the second period. Carey Price made 26 saves, with Tuukka Rask stopping 27 shots in the losing effort.

Here’s what went right and wrong for the Bruins in the loss:

WHAT WENT WRONG FOR THE BRUINS

- After some really promising showings of late, Matt Bartkowski had a rather rough first period. Bartkowski didn’t look to see if there were any Bruins on his side of the ice as he tried to break the puck out, and the result was a turnover as he sent the puck to P.K. Subban at the point. Subban fired the puck on net, eventually leading to Galchenyuk’s first-period goal.

- Claude Julien shuffled his bottom three lines midway through the first period, leaving only the Milan Lucic – David Krejci – Nathan Horton line intact. The changes saw Tyler Seguin moved back to right wing on the second line, with Rich Peverley centering the line and Jaromir Jagr being teamed with Gregory Campbell and Daniel Paille for the third line. Jay Pandolfo, Kaspars Daugavins and Shawn Thornton served as the fourth line.

- The Bruins were outshot, 10-4, in the first period and got no shots on goal from their forwards in the first 20 minutes. Tyler Seguin and Brad Marchand combined for zero shots on goal in the game. That’s unacceptable.

- With Ryder’s second-period goal, he now has three goals in three games against the Bruins this season since rejoining the Canadiens. Ryder had two goals last Wednesday against the B’s, and he gave the Habs a 2-0 lead Saturday by redirecting a shot from Subban on the power play. The puck also went off Dennis Seidenberg’s stick before floating past Rask.

- Nathan Horton missed the net on an opportunity in front in the second period, as Josh Gorges was on him when Lucic sent a pass his way with plenty of open net to work with. Price had committed to Lucic on the other side of the net, but when Lucic fed Horton the right wing jammed the puck wide left on a forehand bid. It wasn’t the first such occurrence of late, as he also failed to finish chances in front against the Devils Thursday and the Flyers last Saturday.

- Good note from Mike Salk, who noted during the game that for a team that got Jaromir Jagr in hopes of fixing its power play, the Bruins haven’t been drawing a ton of penalties. The B’s got their first and only man advantage of the game in the final minute of the game and didn’t get a single shot on goal during it. The Canadiens scored on their only power play after Milan Lucic went off for cross-checking Tomas Plekanec, who took a whack at Lucic to get him to retaliate.

WHAT WENT RIGHT FOR THE BRUINS

- In what has probably been his best season as a Bruin, Daniel Paille won a big faceoff to set up the Bruins’ second-period goal. With Gregory Campbell tossed out of the circle, Paille won the faceoff and sent the puck back to Johnny Boychuk, whose shot went off Paille and past Carey Price in a fluttering fashion.

- The scoring chances continued for the Canadiens after they took a 2-0 lead, so give Rask credit for keeping it close by denying Montreal bids. Rask made 10 saves on 11 shots in the second period.

Brad Marchand helped the Bruins erase an early 2-0 hole against the Canadiens. (AP)

Brendan Gallagher scored the decisive goal in the sixth round of the shootout as the Canadiens beat the Bruins, 6-5, in overtime Wednesday night at TD Garden. Gallagher also scored once in the third period before the Canadiens tied it with 8.2 seconds left in regulation. The Bruins had a pair of two-goal leads but couldn’t hold on, as they fell a point behind the Canadiens in the Northeast Division. The Bruins went 0-for-6 in the shootout while Gallagher was the only Canadien to score in six tries.

Patrice Bergeron scored a goal and added three assists while Tyler Seguin added a goal and two assists

With his team battling for the top spot in the Northeast Division six floors below, Bruins president Cam Neely went back and forth on the ninth floor, shadowed by security. This led to speculation about whether the Bruins might be ready to pull the trigger on a major trade for Calgary Flames star Jarome Iginla, who was scratched from his game Wednesday night, the first game the 35-year-old has missed since Feb. 2007.

For a second straight game, Claude Julien juggled his lines at the start before reverting midway through the game. And, for the second straight game against a division rival, the Bruins came out flat in the first period. They were held without a shot for the first eight minutes of the game.

With the exception of Seguin, the Canadiens generated most of the energy on the ice in the opening 20 minutes. It paid off for the visitors when former Bruin Michael Ryder got enough on a snap shot from the low slot and beat Tuukka Rask just 4:15 into the game for a 1-0 lead.

The Canadiens appeared to be in the driver’s seat when arch-nemesis P.K. Subban blasted a slap shot from the right point through a screen and past Rask 2:53 into the second period for a 2-0 lead.

Despite falling behind for the fourth straight game, the Bruins did not panic. And as they did on Monday, when they also fell behind by two goals at the start to the Maple Leafs, the Bruins woke up just in time.

It was a rush from Seguin that got things going 30 seconds after the Subban goal. Seguin came flying down the right wing and fired a shot off the crossbar. The puck came down in front of Bergeron. He couldn’t put it in the open net but Dougie Hamilton was in the right place at the right time and drilled a one-timer from between the circles past Price and the comeback was on.

Less than four minutes later, with Julien again rejoining his regular lines, Marchand netted the game-tying goal by battling for position in front of Price and knocking the puck past the Montreal goalie. Marchand, who started the game on the third line with Rich Peverley and Jordan Caron, was reunited with Bergeron and Seguin. It was Seguin who won the battle in the corner and fired the puck in front of the net for Marchand.

After Lars Eller hauled down Shawn Thornton on a rush down the left wing, the Bruins went on the power play. With 14 seconds left on the man advantage, Bergeron potted his 10th of the season to put the Bruins up, 3-2. The play was set up when Zdeno Chara fed Torey Krug, called up earlier in the day. Krug fired a shot from the right point. The shot deflected off Rich Peverley in front and onto the stick of Bergeron who finished it off.

With the Garden crowd still buzzing, David Krejci fed Nathan Horton on a mini-break and Horton beat Price 35 seconds later for a 4-2 lead. After spotting the Canadiens the game’s first three shots in the opening seven minutes, the Bruins outshot Montreal 26-8 and finished with a 26-11 advantage after 40 minutes.

Price was pulled in favor of Peter Budaj to start the third. Andrew Ference drew a hooking penalty and the Bruins had a power play but could generate little momentum. Then moments later, Ryder added his second of the night, drawing the Canadiens within one, 4-3, with just over 16 minutes still left in regulation.

With Hamilton in the penalty box for holding, Budaj kept the Canadiens in the game with a huge save on Gregory Campbell on a shorthanded breakaway with 10 minutes left. Seguin then gave the Bruins huge insurance with a backhander to beat Budaj with just over eight minutes left, putting Boston up, 5-3. The Canadiens made it a one goal game again as the Seguin goal was being announced as Brendan Gallagher got a lucky bounce off the mouth Dennis Sidenberg and beat Rask with 7:42 left. The Bruins killed off their first five shorthanded situations, including an elbowing call on Chara with 4:40 left in regulation.

But a delay of game on Aaron Johnson with 1:27 left, led to a 6-on-4 with Montreal’s empty net. A shot from Subban deflected off the stick of Chara past Rask with 8.2 seconds left to tie the game. Andrei Markov was credited with the goal The Bruins got a power play with 1:20 left in overtime when Alexei Emelin was called for a hooking penalty. Krejci had one final chance to win it but Budaj smothered the shot from the right circle two seconds before the end of overtime.

The Bruins are off Thursday and Friday before visiting Philadelphia for a matinee with the Flyers on Saturday. For more, visit the Bruins team page at weei.com/bruins.

Michael Ryder

Former Bruin Michael Ryder, who was traded from the Stars to the Canadiens on Tuesday, said prior to Sunday’s game that he didn’t think the Bruins would try to trade for him.

Ryder, who is in the final year of a two-year, $7 million deal that he signed with Dallas after leaving the Bruins, would have seemed to be a good fit for the B’s given the experience with the team and their need for more offensive production on the third line.

“I think if they wanted to keep me, they probably would have tried to sign me [after the 2011 season],” Ryder said. “Sometimes that happens. It’s part of the game and you have to move on. I liked it in Dallas.”

B’s general manager Peter Chiarelli told Ryder and Tomas Kaberle to test the waters of free agency after the team won the Cup. It didn’t take Ryder long to find a new home, as he inked his deal with Dallas on the first day of free agency.

“I kind of knew pretty much what was going to happen anyways, so I wasn’t surprised at all,” Ryder said of the team not making an effort to re-sign him. “I kind of knew which way it was going to go, so I wasn’t that surprised.”

Added Ryder: “Sometimes you just get a feeling. It was the same thing with when I left Montreal and knew I wouldn’t be back. You can just tell sometimes how things work out and everything. I just kind of had that feeling that I wouldn’t be back there.”

Sunday marks Ryder’s first time playing in front of the TD Garden crowd since Game 6 of the 2011 Stanley Cup finals. Strangely, it will be as a member of the Canadiens, as the Habs shipped Erik Cole to Dallas for him and a third-round pick. Ryder played for the Habs from 2003-2008 before signing with Boston as a free agent.

“Everything’s happened pretty fast the last three, four days for me,” Ryder said prior to Sunday’s game. “It’s pretty interesting. … It’s different to be back here on the other side this time, but it is what it is and I’m excited to be in Montreal. It’s going to be a big game tonight for first place, and I think it’s exciting.”

Though he’s a Canadien now, Bruins fans would be wise to not jeer the veteran winger. In addition to his eight postseason goals in 2011 (two of which were game-winners), Ryder also made a key save on Tomas Plekanec in Game 5 of the conference quarterfinals against the Canadiens.

Gregory Campbell doesn’t know how Ryder should be received, but he hopes fans don’t forget what Ryder meant to the Cup-winning team.

“He helped us win,” Campbell said. “He was a big part of our team, so however they want to take that. It’s like any other player going into another building. There’s good memories, but tonight he’s not on the team that you should be cheering for.”

Former Bruin Michael Ryder is a Canadien once again. (AP)

WILMINGTON — If Bruins fans were hoping Michael Ryder would return to his old stomping grounds, they should have been more specific.

The Canadiens swung a deal with the Stars Tuesday night to bring back the former Hab and Bruin, sending Erik Cole to Dallas for Ryder and a third-round pick. The 32-year-old has six goals and eight assists for 14 points this season after scoring a career-high 35 goals a season ago.

Ryder, who was in the final year of the two-year deal he signed with the Stars after the Bruins’ Stanley Cup championship, would have been a logical fit for the B’s at the trade deadline. In addition to getting some payroll off the books (Cole has a $4.5 million cap hit through 2014-15), the Canadiens managed to cross one target off Boston’s list entering trade season.

Given that the roster has gone largely unchanged since Ryder and the B’s won the Cup in 2011, it will be strange for some Bruins players to see Ryder as a division rival rather than a teammate. Tyler Seguin still remembers how much Ryder’s presence helped him in his rookie year, from his Hail Mary pass on Seguin’s first career goal to their explosive work together in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals against the Lightning.

“[He helped me] a lot. He was on my first NHL goal, he made that pass to me,” Seguin said Wednesday. “He wasn’t as loud as some of the other guys, but when he did talk to me, he was a guy you’d look up to. He could definitely snipe the puck, and it was a treat playing with him.”

The Canadiens weren’t expected to be a team that would be wheeling and dealing to improve their roster for this season, as few expected them to seriously contend after a miserable 2011-12 campaign in which they went 31-25-16 and were sellers when it came to trading. Led by coach Michel Therrien, the Habs have turned their fortune around with a with a 12-4-3 start, leading the Northeast Division with 27 points (though they’ve played three more games than the B’s).

While many are surprised by the fact that the Habs have been for real this season, the Bruins aren’t.

“I think Montreal, as bad as their record was last year, I think they’re a way better team than what it showed last year,” Rich Peverley said. “… Nothing’s set in stone, and they are a good team with obviously one of the best goalies in the league.”

The Bruins will face Ryder and the Habs Sunday night at TD Garden, and while his former teammates haven’t forgotten what he meant to the B’s, they’re hoping his first game back in Boston since departing isn’t too pleasant.

“We obviously have a lot of good memories together, going to the Cup there, but every guy on this team has buddies on other teams that we play against night in and night out,” Brad Marchand said. “When you’re on the ice, you hate the guy just as much as the other guy beside him.”

Tyler Seguin showed flashes of brilliance as a rookie, but he has a long way to go to be a regular contributor in Boston. (AP)

With captains’ practices just two short weeks from commencing, WEEI.com will be looking at the questions facing the defending Stanley Cup champions in the 2011-12 season.

This time last year, there were plenty of questions on the mind of any Bruins fan. Much like the 2003 Red Sox, the 2009-10 Bruins left a bad taste in fans’ mouths from the heartbreaking fashion in which they were eliminated the season before. As a result, the B’s went out and added a couple of big names (Nathan Horton and Tyler Seguin) with the hope that the team that came so close to the conference finals the year before was just a player or two from something special.

So, with all of the anticipation for the 2010-11 campaign came plenty of questions. Would Tim Thomas bounce back from a subpar season, and would hip surgery make a difference? (That one was answered pretty quickly.) Then there was the question of whether Michael Ryder and Blake Wheeler would turn in performances better than their underwhelming 2009-10 campaigns. While Wheeler wasn’t around to completely answer the question, Ryder gave as strong a “kind of” as one could by being a healthy scratch at points of a regular season that matched his 18 goals of a season prior, while also being one of the team’s playoff heroes. People wondered how Horton might go about adjusting to a hockey market, whether Claude Julien was the right coach for the team and whether Tuukka Rask could once again be the best goalie (statistically speaking) in the league.

Many of those questions were answered emphatically. Now with a Cup ring thanks largely to his decision to go with a defensive super pair of Zdeno Chara and Dennis Seidenberg, Julien not only is the right coach for the team but should be considered one of the best coaches in the league. Thomas was the best goaltender this side of any body of water, Ryder and Wheeler have moved on, and Horton played his best when it mattered most. Now that last year’s questions have been answered and captains’ practices are a short two weeks away, it’s worth taking a look at what questions surround the Bruins as they begin their title defense.

First up is a question that will likely be discussed plenty leading into the season: What will Seguin do in his second year?

There are several truths regarding Seguin. He’s the Bruins’ most talented player. He’s essentially their only hope when it comes to those pesky shootouts. He’ll always be compared to Phil Kessel. And, until he is one of the 10 best scorers in the league, people will question the reason why, and such questions will likely be accompanied by some sort of finger-pointing at the coach.

Read the rest of this entry »

When players begin showing up for captains practices and eventually training camp as the summer winds down and the preseason begins, Andrew Ference, like the other returning players from the Stanley Cup champions, will have a couple of new faces to meet.

Joe Corvo (Canada.com)

Ference will have a new fellow blueliner in defenseman Joe Corvo, for whom the B’s traded a fourth-round pick to the Hurricanes the day Tomas Kaberle signed with Carolina. Ference may not know Corvo personally, but he knows they’ll have a good ice-breaker for when they meet.

“I know he’s got a lot of tattoos, so we’ll be able to swap,” Ference said with a laugh.

Ference, the team’s resident tattoo aficionado, flew his tattoo artist in from Calgary so he and his teammates could commemorate their Stanley Cup championship with ink on breakup day. While many players discussed what types of tattoos they were considering that day, the final tally of players to go through with it was a measly seven, including Ference, Brad Marchand and Tyler Seguin. Ference noted that other teammates simply got them on other days, such as Chris Kelly, whom Ference said was set to get his this week.

While a simple google search will show that Seguin and Marchand (the latter of whom rarely wore a shirt in the week that followed the Cup win) got “Stanley Cup Champions Boston Bruins 6-15-11″ on the side of their ribs, Ference went with a very plain black-and-white spoked B on his right arm.

“Some guys got the writing, and I went with the B,” Ference said. “I don’t know. I left room for more years though.”

Ference will also meet Benoit Pouliot, with whom he’s already had at least one dealing. It was Ference who sparred with Pouliot in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals after the then-Canadiens forward attempted to hit Johnny Boychuk high on a dangerous play in the corner. Ference isn’t concerned about having any difficulty befriending who was once the enemy, citing the team’s ability to do it in the past.

“We got along fine with Michael Ryder,” Ference pointed out, as Ryder spent his entire career in the Montreal organization before becoming a popular guy in the Bruins’ dressing room.

While there are similarities between the two situations of Ryder and Pouliot in that both came to the Bruins after playing for the Habs (Ryder signed a three-year, $12 million deal with the B’s back in the summer of 2008), one would generally be far more skeptical of Pouliot today than they were of Ryder in 2008. Ryder was an established scorer in the NHL, while Pouliot, to borrow a bit of logic from Jack Edwards, has been nothing short of a fantastic bust since being drafted fourth overall by the Wild in 2005. For Pouliot to do anything like Ryder on the stat sheet would make the $1.1 million they dropped on the 24-year a sound investment.

Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli spoke with the media Thursday in anticipation of the NHL’s free agency period opening Friday. The Bruins have two players set to hit unrestricted free agency in winger Michael Ryder and defenseman Tomas Kaberle. The GM said that ties have not been severed with either player, but that the B’s likely won’t be active in the early stages of free agency.

“Certainly theres no finality to our relationship,” Chiarelli said of Kaberle. “What we’ve agreed to with Tomas and his agent is that he would look into the market and we would continue to talk with him. … Let me be perfectly clear, there’s no end to the relationship because we haven’t signed him to this point.”

Chiarelli noted that if the Bruins are unable to retain Kaberle, he will look both in-house and elsewhere for his replacement on the Bruins’ blue line.

He also indicated that the B’s are taking the same approach with Ryder, and that if the players take deals with other teams, the Bruins are willing to accept that fate.

“I’m wary of the market and where it stands now,” Chiarelli said. “I said, ‘Look guys, go out there, see what’s going on and let’s continue to talk.’ The risk that we run is that they get a deal and then they can’t come back to us, and I understand that risk. That’s where those two guys stand.”

Depending on what the B’s do with Ryder, Kaberle, restricted free agent Brad Marchand and what happens with Marc Savard, the team could be in good standing with the league’s salary cap (set for $64.3 million next season). Despite the fact that they should have money to spend, allocating resources to multiple years could make things difficult for the Bruins, as both David Krejci and Tuukka Rask will see their current contracts expire after the coming season. Tyler Seguin‘s deal is up in two years, and one would have to assume all three players will see increases in pay.

“It certainly impacts it,” Chiarelli said of knowing they have future raises to give. “I’m a little wary of the market, first and foremost. The cap is high, and the cap is certainly going to come down in some shape or form, so generally speaking, I’m wary of the market and where I think it may be going.

“Two, and a close two, is that we do have guys that we warrant to re-sign, and they’re going to command raises. I’m really not in a position to go out and give a guy a big-term contract. I think thwart we can find that help elsewhere other than a big-term contract and still be in a good position to re-sign our guys as they come up the next year or two.”

The Bruins qualified restricted free agents Marchand, Andrew Bodnarchuk and Stefan Chaput. Chiarelli said that negotiations with Marchand have not yet begun.

The GM also said that the team will not re-sign defenseman Shane Hnidy, who served as a healthy scratch/depth player during the stretch run and postseason. Hnidy, 35, played three games in both the regular season and postseason.

“We’ve told Shane that we aren’t re-signing him,” Chiarelli said. “I think he’ll be a good addition somewhere else, and I told him that. Certainly I’d help him along the way for that.”

As for whether the list of Bruins’ targets may be shrinking, Chiarelli admitted that some players have been taken out of consideration in recent days. The rights of players set to hit free agency have been traded, which may factor into that.

“I have a big whiteboard in my office and I have our interest list and I have our secondary list,” he said. “Yes, there are names knocked off. Just because they’re on our interest list doesn’t mean we’re going to go off and sign them, but certainly we’re going to explore them. And I’ve crossed off names.”

One thing that came up time and time again was Chiarelli noting how “wary” of the market he was. He assessed the crop as being less than outstanding, which may be a reason why he would have reservations about making a big splash.

“I look at my board and I see the number of players and the quality of players,” he said. “And the numbers may be the same, [but] the quality is … there’s just not the high end players. Then of course you’ve got the floor of the cap and teams have to spend, so you’re going to get contracts I think that, maybe that, they’re generally higher in the unrestricted market, but I even think they’ll be that added premium because teams have to spend. … That’s why I’m a little cautious going into this market. There’s not the supply that there normally is, and I think the demand is greater because of the cap floor and teams have to spend.”