How Boston left the rest of the NHL behind. Far behind.

BOSTON – From the moment the Boston Bruins gathered for training camp in September, the players had a mandate. Of course, almost every team strives to win the Stanley Cup, but the Bruins were driven by a deeper goal.

Patrice Bergeron, their beloved captain, and David Krejci, another admired veteran, had both returned to play for Boston, perhaps for one final season. The rest of the players, coaching staff and front office united in a major effort to win a championship in what could be the last chance for the two leaders, pillars of the organization for more than a decade.

“It would mean a lot to us to send him on top,” defender Charlie McAvoy said at a recent training session, referring first to Bergeron and then to Krejci. “That is definitely an extra part of our motivation, because that would be incredible. It’s him, it’s Krejci. It’s about not wanting to skip a beat, being there at every moment, because they might not be around next year, so you don’t want to disappoint them.”

For the first five months of the season, the Bruins adhered to that doctrine at a record pace, at least until recently, when a curiously sloppy stretch called into question the entire venture.

It had all gone so well. Last week, the Bruins racked up 50 wins in just 64 games, faster than any team in National Hockey League history. They had a goal difference of 105 at the time, more than double the team closest to it, and with 15 games left they could still at least tie the record for most wins in a season, 62 , achieved by the Detroit Red Wings in 1996 and matched by the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2019.

After racking up 50 wins, the Bruins lost to teams that lost records in Detroit and Chicago. McAvoy spoke for his teammates when he said no one wanted to let Bergeron and Krejci down, but that’s what happened in Chicago on Tuesday, as Boston lost 6-3 to a team fully committed to rebuilding. For perhaps the first time in the entire season, they seemed distracted and a step behind.

“Right now we’re disconnected, we’re not playing right, we’re cheating,” Bergeron said. “This competition will humiliate you if you do that.”

For the first five months of the season, it was the Bruins who humiliated the rest of the league, and they still have the best record in the NHL at 51-11-5, with 107 points, so it’s hard to blame them to give for a few slips after 64 games of almost flawless hockey.

“They’re the class of the NHL,” said Edmonton Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft.

Their goalkeeping duo, Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman, has been fundamental. Ullmark, in his second season in Boston, leads the league in goals against average (1.97), save percentage (.935), and wins, and Swayman is third in goals against (2.28).

“It starts with the goaltenders,” said AJ Mleczko, the Olympic gold-medal-winning forward for the United States and an analyst for ESPN and MSG networks, commenting from ice level during the recent Bruins-Oilers game. “Any team that is going to succeed needs a goalkeeper tandem, but Ullmark, no one expected him to be as good as he has been this season.”

The Bruins pulled back on track in Winnipeg on Thursday with a 3-0 win over the Jets on a shutout by Swayman, but the rest of the league, especially in the highly competitive Eastern Conference, still hope Boston delivers as well early, relying heavily on players in their mid to late thirties. Their top two centers – the position that requires the most skating – are Bergeron, 37, and Krejci, 36. She and Brad Marchand, the very talented and sloppy forward, who turns 35 in May, are the only players left from the 2011 champion team.

“We have a lot of guys with a lot of experience in difficult situations who don’t give up and don’t change at all,” said Marchand. “I know there’s a lot of young talent in the league and that’s the most important thing. But you see the teams that win, they usually have a lot of older guys.

At the beginning of the summer, Bergeron and Krejci were in doubt about a return to Boston. Krejci had gone home to the Czech Republic to play one season, but Bergeron called and convinced Krejci that they should reunite on the only NHL team they had played for.

“I got very excited and it helps if someone like that wants you,” Krejci said after a training session last week. “People called it the ‘last dance’ or something like that. I don’t want to get caught up in this stuff. But I’m happy to have come back and we’re having the season we’re having.”

Still, there was widespread skepticism at the start of the season as McAvoy, one of the top defenders in the League, and Marchand would miss the first few weeks of off-season surgeries.

But Boston roared to a 17-2 start and, until last week, simply overwhelmed opponents with talent, depth, experience and team cohesion. For a while, the record for wins seemed inevitable.

But those Red Wings and Lightning teams that won 62 games didn’t win the Stanley Cup, and perhaps burnout was a factor. Jim Montgomery, who replaces Bruce Cassidy as head coach in his first year, said he will give Bergeron and Krejci occasional rests for the remaining 15 games, so the record for wins seems less likely, especially with Boston’s recent dip in form. But regular season success is only retroactively determined by what the team does in the playoffs.

“I don’t think we’re chasing the record,” said Krejci. “I don’t even think we talked about it once. I mean, our record is pretty cool, and I think we should be proud of it. But at the same time, it just doesn’t matter.”

Even winning the semi-dreaded President’s Trophy — awarded to the team with the most regular-season wins — is a risky metric. The last seven President’s Trophy winners have lost in the first or second round of the playoffs and it has been 10 years since a President’s Trophy winner won the Stanley Cup (Chicago in 2013). Since 2000, only four of the 22 President’s Trophy winners have consumed champagne from the Cup.

To date, the Bruins had experienced only one worse play, losing four of five around the All-Star Game. They won the next 10 in a row, but when the streak ended there were signs of danger. In Calgary, at the end of a road trip out west, they were exhausted and traveled long distances without touching the puck. But Ullmark made 54 saves and Boston won on McAvoy’s overtime goal on a brilliant pass from Bergeron.

“The game in Calgary was probably the worst game I’ve ever seen in my career,” said Marchand. “It says a lot about our character to get it out and find a way to make it happen. Come playoff time, there will be adversity. But you have to find a way to win.”

Whether the Bruins limp or rise towards the playoffs is secondary. Their goal has always been to win another Stanley Cup for their veteran leaders.