With the playoffs becoming a pipe dream entering their final game of the 2014-15 regular season, the Boston Bruins are faced with the reality that they need help.

They could’ve helped their own cause by building off a five-game win streak against the Capitals. But Braden Holtby and company put a stop to that and shutout the Black and Gold for the third time this season.

They could’ve bounced back against a Florida Panthers team that was eliminated from postseason contention. Instead, they looked gassed and disinterested by the time the third period started.

Now the B’s find themselves trailing the Ottawa Senators by two points for the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. By the time they take the ice Saturday night versus the Tampa Bay Lightning, they may be eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since the 2006-07 season.

From the front office to the coaching and the roster, the Bruins have no one but themselves to blame for the position they’re in entering Game No. 82 of the regular season. Peter Chiarelli echoed that sentiment during his media availability with reporters in Tampa on Friday.

“If you want to apportion the blame, then everybody is to blame,” Chiarelli told the press. “Everybody is to blame, including myself. If I don’t get the right players if the coaching staff doesn’t get to the head of the players and if the players don’t perform…I’m disappointed that we put ourselves in this position. I consider it a failure, it’s a failure on everybody’s part.”

“We’re still mathematically alive and things can happen,” Chiarelli added. “But we put ourselves in this position.”

From defensive breakdowns to a lack of finish and a roster full of role players, the 2014-15 Bruins can be best described as average. An average team that at times need to be motivated if you ask fans around Boston.

Chiarelli, however, doesn’t buy that notion.

“I don’t buy that they need motivation,” Chiarelli said when a reporter asked about the motivation factor. “There are teams that win with lesser talent than ours. I don’t buy that at all.”

One thing is for certain, Chiarelli’s hot seat, as well as Claude Julien’s, is at the boiling point. Assuming they don’t get help from the Senators or Penguins, it’s safe to say that Chiarelli and Julien won’t be around to help fix the problems facing the Bruins before the 2015-16 season.

“I don’t know, I’m not sure,” Chiarelli said to reporters about his future with the B’s. “I’m operating that I am until they tell me that I’m not.”