Bruins are starting to believe in themselves as they keep winning streak going

It wasn't too long ago that a two-goal deficit entering the third period would have felt insurmountable for the Boston Bruins. It may have still felt insurmountable for a lot of fans Saturday afternoon, with the scar tissue from the first two months of this season hard to ignore.

But these Bruins suddenly have a funny little thing that goes a long way in sports: Belief. These aren't the same Bruins who had the worst third-period goal differential in the NHL through 20 games. They're not the same team that couldn't string together more than two wins and seemed to fall apart every time they hit a little bit of adversity.

No, the new Bruins are showing that they can overcome adversity. On Saturday, they came back from 3-1 down in the third period to beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 4-3, in overtime. They have won four straight games. They are 7-2-0 since Joe Sacco took over for Jim Montgomery, and they have the fourth-best third-period goal differential during that time (+5).

"It was a great sign tonight how we battled back in that third period," Sacco said. "Great sign for our team."

The first two periods weren't pretty for the Bruins. They fell behind 2-0 and then 3-1, and they had only mustered a single high-danger chance at 5-on-5 play. Creating so few chances is, of course, not a recipe for overcoming a multi-goal deficit.

But whereas the Bruins from earlier this season may have just gone quietly into the night, they instead ramped up the intensity in the third period Saturday. Trent Frederic cut it to 3-2 just over five minutes into the period, pouncing on a bouncing puck in the slot and whacking it past Flyers goalie Aleksei Kolosov for his second goal of the game.

Speaking of belief, Frederic is one player who may be finally starting to find more of it. He has been way off his scoring pace from last season overall, but now has five points (2 goals, 3 assists) in his last five games. He has also ramped up the physicality playing on an identity-type line with Mark Kastelic and Charlie Coyle, landing three or more hits in each of his last six games, including seven on Saturday.

"He started to move his feet better as the game went on, and he was direct and he was attacking the net," Sacco said of Frederic. "I just noticed him around the net-front quite a bit, and that's a good sign for Freddie. And again, that line is effective, they do their job, they play hard, they're tenacious on the puck. So, Freddie was an example of that. That was a good example for him tonight of how he has to play to be successful."

Then a guy who has plenty of belief when it comes to scoring big goals, Brad Marchand, tied the game with 5:22 left in regulation. Justin Brazeau chipped a puck out of the defensive zone that sprung Marchand on a breakaway, which he capitalized on with a nice five-hole finish.

"It just shows the sign of a team that sticks with it," Sacco said of the comeback. "You're not going to have your best during the course of 60 minutes. There's going to be times in the games where there's ups and downs and ebbs and flows. So, you just have to stick with your process, stick with the game plan and believe in it."

In overtime, David Pastrnak won a battle in the corner and set up Pavel Zacha for the winner, the second time in the last three games that those two connected in overtime. Jeremy Swayman had denied Joel Farabee on a breakaway less than a minute earlier.

The Bruins have not played great in all seven of their wins under Sacco. In fact, most of them have looked a bit like Saturday: Some good, some bad, not a lot of great scoring chances either way, but they find a way to grind through and pull out the win. And the more they do it, the more they're starting to believe that they continue to do it.

"It's the confidence that we can find our game again, I think more than anything," Charlie McAvoy said Saturday. "When we would lose it earlier in the year, we wouldn't be able to get it back at all, or really anything that resembled it. We know what it looks like now, so it's easier for us to kind of say, 'Hey, let's get back to doing it again and we'll be all right. We'll live with the result.'"

The Bruins have taken advantage of a soft stretch in their schedule and a lot of home games. That is what they needed to do post-coaching change. Now the challenge gets tougher. After a day off Sunday and a practice at Warrior Ice Arena on Monday, they embark on a five-game Western road trip that begins Tuesday against the 19-8-0 Winnipeg Jets.