The Boston Bruins put themselves in great position again last night to take two points away from TD Garden as they led the Colorado Avalanche, 2-1, with a little under two minutes to play in regulation.

Claude Julien’s team overcame another deficit trailing 1-0 after the first period where Jarome Iginla scored with less than a second left due to a Bruins defensive breakdown. The Black and Gold also killed off another five penalties including two 5-on-3 scenarios.

Simply put, the Black and Gold just ran out of gas Wednesday night. With Patrick Roy pulling Semyon Varlamov for the extra attacker, Ryan O’Reilly slipped past the defense in the slot beating Tuukka Rask to tie the game at 2-2 with 1:45 left in regulation. The Avs went on to win in the dreaded shootout, 3-2.

Rask did all he could in the game stopping 34 of 36 shots on the night while Zdeno Chara and Dennis Seidenberg provided the heavy lifting on the penalty kill playing 5:40 and 4:30 respectively. Adam McQuaid also put in over 3:30 of ice time on the kill while Patrice Bergeron skated for 3:26 and Loui Eriksson for three minutes.

Julien was frustrated with the outcome due to some missed calls and his team having to kill off so many penalties on the night.

“I think those penalties took its toll on us,” Julien told reporters post game. “It just seemed as if we weren’t going to get too many power plays. It’s too bad. It was such a close game and to have a five-two edge on power plays is unbelievable. There were some blatant missed calls out there and it’s getting frustrating because at the end of the day, your guys work hard to kill penalties, but at the end of the day they get burnt out and you run out of gas at the end. No doubt it took its toll.”

On the second night of a back-to-back where they killed off six penalties the night before, the B’s had to be fatigued. The Stars played that up-and-down the ice style of a game that the B’s did not want to get into, but they hung in there and escaped with a 3-1 win.

Wednesday night, it was much of the same. The team had to kill off five penalties including two 5-on-3 penalties. There is no question these situations take tolls on players, but the Black and Gold had the lead towards the end of the game, but simply ran out of gas.

“We played a good 58 minutes of hockey tonight and killed a lot of good penalties and Tuukks came up big for us in some key moments,” Torey Krug said to the media after scoring his ninth goal of the season to tie the game at 1-1 in the second period. “They just out battled us in the end and they scored the goal in the shootout that mattered.”

Three out of four points before heading into the All-star break is acceptable for B’s as they hold a seven point lead (with four games in hand) on the ninth place Florida Panthers.

Rest assuredly, with the B’s having a week off, no player will run out of gas late in their first game back against Johnny Boychuk and the New York Islanders.

“Yeah, it’s definitely disappointing, considering we were up with a couple minutes left,” Brad Marchand said to reporters after scoring his team leading 13th goal of the season in his first game back from his two-game suspension. “We did get a point. It could be worse, we couldn’t have gotten any.

“Going into the break, I think we have to be happy with how we battled back to put us in a playoff position and we’re playing some pretty good hockey. So hopefully we can get out of this break and come out of it rested and play good hockey.”