The Bruins entered the Bell Centre Wednesday night losers of seven straight and 12 of 13 against the Montreal Canadiens. With star goalie Carey Price, top-six forward Brandon Gallagher and a few other key depth guys out of the lineup for Montreal, the Bruins had a chance to snap their skid against their longtime rivals.

The Bruins did just that, but it certainly wasn’t pretty.

After coasting through the games’ first two periods, the Bruins found themselves once again trailing at the Bell Centre entering the third. But it could have been much worse. The Bruins had just 14 shots after 40 minutes and Bruins’ goalie Tuukka Rask stopped 25 of 26 Canadiens shots. The Habs lone goal came on a lucky bounce that deflected off of defenseman Zach Trotman and into the Bruins net.

The Bruins came out a different team in the third period and it paid dividends as they scored three unanswered goals — including two in 42 seconds — to take down the Habs and end their losing streak against Montreal. The win was only the Bruins second this season when trailing after two periods.

The Bruins mixed up their lines in the third period, and it worked out well for Claude Julien’s club.

“We weren’t generating enough, the first time I made that change, we scored that first goal with Connolly and Ferraro with Spooner,” Julien told reporters after the game. “We were in a close game. But we weren’t generating some offense.”

The Bruins know their struggles against Montreal are all too real, but despite the domination by Montreal in recent years, Dennis Seidenberg and company try to not think about that and remain focused on the task at hand.

“When you play those guys you can’t really think about the past too much because it hasn’t been really too good, you just have to stay in the present and just go forward and believe in our game and think of what we have to do in order to win,” said Seidenberg, who landed five hits and two blocked shots in 18:29 of ice time Wednesday night.

The main reason as to why the Bruins were indeed in a close game was thanks to the play of Rask, who arguably had his best performance of the season as he continues to rebound from a slow start to the 2015-16 season.

“I’ve said it before I analyze the game and the way I play, and it doesn’t so much match the results all the time. But it’s a great win, and only one goal here is good,” Rask said of the victory in Montreal. “It’s not an easy building to play in, and we obviously haven’t done as well for ourselves as we’d like to here for the most part. But today was a good win and we’ll take it.”

The win was Rask’s fourth career win against the Canadiens. All four of those wins have come at the Bell Centre. In the playoffs, Rask has defeated Montreal three times (all in 2014) with two of those coming at TD Garden.

After allowing just the one goal to Paul Byron last night, Rask has now allowed just one goal in last two starts and has a goals-against average of 1.33 in four December games. In his last seven games, Rask has a 5-0-2 record, 1.61 goals-against average, a .946 save percentage and two shutouts.

With the Winter Classic just over three weeks away, the Bruins have time to build off this win and continue to climb the standings leading up to their next contest with the Habs. Excluding the playoffs, the Bruins have not had a win streak against the Canadiens since the 2011-12 and 2013 lockout shortened season where they won five-in-a-row spanning from November of 2011 through February of 2013.

Once again, excluding playoffs, Rask has never held a win streak against the Canadiens.