On December 1st, the Bruins sat behind the Detroit Red Wings, Ottawa Senators and the division leading Montreal Canadiens in the Atlantic Division. The Bruins longtime rivals held a 12 point lead over the Black and Gold on the first of the month.

Fast forward 20 days and you’ll see the Atlantic Division is now a whole new story.

After Sunday’s shootout win over the New Jersey Devils, the Bruins sit just one point behind the still division leading Canadiens.

“Yeah I mean you go from, you know, out of a playoff spot to where we are right now and you know it’s exciting – it’s where you want to be,” said Landon Ferraro who logged 14:38 of time on ice in Sunday’s win. “It’s still extremely early in the year, you know, there’s a still a lot of games left, and you can’t be satisfied, you know. Teams are just getting better. So we need to make sure that we continue to get better and make sure that, you know, we’re pushing ourselves every day.”

After an off-season of questionable moves, the Bruins got off on the wrong foot in October with three straight losses at home to start the season. After October saw the Bruins go 6-3-1, November started off rough of the Bruins as well with just two wins in seven contests. Since their loss on November 17 to the San Jose Sharks, things have changed for the Bruins.

With points in 14 of 15 games since the loss to the Sharks, the Bruins are now knocking on Montreal’s door. From the much-improved play of the Bruins penalty kill to Tuukka Rask getting back to well, Tuukka Rask, things have been clicking of late for the Black and Gold.

With a handful of new faces in the lineup and the style of play on the ice different, it took the Bruins some time for chemistry to build and guys to get comfortable. But now that chemistry and comfortableness has developed, the Bruins are playing good hockey.

“Well, there were a lot of things. But obviously we got a new GM, we got some new faces so kind of getting used to the system, get used to each other. You have to create chemistry off the ice and then kind of click on the ice as well so. It takes some time,” said forward David Krejci.

“After that like ten games I thought we were rolling pretty good. We were winning games, even if we lost a game it was in overtime or we lost by one goal, so that’s how you lose many games- just by one goal or in overtime. So I thought we have something good going but we have to keep it up.”

With injuries to reigning MVP Carey Price, Brendan Gallagher and other key players for the Canadiens bogging down the Habs, the Bruins have made the most of their opportunity to catch, and possibly, overtake the Canadiens.

With two games in hand on Montreal and a Winter Classic date coming up on New Year’s Day, the Bruins have a golden opportunity to not only overtake the Canadiens but create some space between the two.

“Yeah, we would have not [thought] that after ten games this season, but we’re there now, a couple games in hand, and obviously it’s about getting as [many] wins as we can right now, trying to catch up. We feel comfortable with our position, and obviously, we’ll keep on pushing,” forward Max Talbot said about catching up to Montreal in the standings.

Things don’t get any easier for the Canadiens who have won just twice in their last 10 contests. Montreal kicked off a season-high eight game road trip Saturday night with a 6-2 loss to the Dallas Stars. In their road trip, Montreal will skate against six teams who currently hold down a playoff spot.

A month ago the Winter Classic looked like just a game outdoors, inside a football stadium involving the best rivalry in all hockey. Now it sits as a game where the points will be extremely valuable.

The Bruins have one more game before the holiday break where they will enjoy some home cooking.

Things are starting to smell pretty good for the Bruins, well, for those who can smell.

“I got a bad nose. I’ve had an operation on that thing and it doesn’t work well for me, but I like what I see,” head coach Claude Julien said. “We’ll make the most of it. We’ve got an opportunity on Tuesday to finish strong and more than anything else if we look at our game tonight, and we look at the areas we could have been better at and focus on that, maybe we have a chance to win ourselves another game before Christmas and who knows.”

Christmas may bring a first place hockey team back to Boston.