More often than not, the Bruins would’ve notched two points with the effort that they showed Thursday night against the Predators. Instead, thanks to a red-hot goaltender in Jusse Saros (35 saves), they came away with nothing.

There was plenty to like about the B’s response to Tuukka Rask leaving the game early and their ability to create offense in their 2-1 loss in the Music City. But with every team in the Atlantic Division having games in hand on the Black and Gold, Torey Krug and company much prefer to come away with points in the standings over style points.

“Overall we played well, but at this point of the season we’re kind of sick of moral victories,” Krug told the press after scoring his second goal in as many games. “We want results.”

They want and need those results.

While they tallied points in three of their four games on the road trip and notched five of eight points, the Bruins really could’ve used two more points to conclude their latest swing away from TD Garden.

“We’ve had too many of those where we outplayed a team and didn’t get the result that we needed,” David Backes said to the media postgame. “At some point, you have to pile up some points. This is results time, and this is a time to make a move. We needed to make it a phenomenal road trip, and instead it was just an okay one.”

Here is what we learned as the Bruins lead over the Senators (five games in hand) for second place in the Atlantic is cut to one following Ottawa’s 4-1 win over Pittsburgh on Thursday.

McIntyre fills in nicely for Rask

There’s been a couple of instances where Zane McIntyre was the hard-luck loser. Chalk another instance on Thursday where he made 17 saves in relief of Rask during his fifth career game. But a defensive breakdown that led to Austin Watson’s opening goal to start the second – after the B’s killed off Anton Blidh’s five-minute major for interference – and Brandon Carlo getting outworked by Fillip Forsberg for the go-ahead goal late in the middle stanza made the difference.

As for Rask, who has all but one of the Bruins’ wins between the pipes, the 2014 Vezina winner told CSNNE’s Joe Haggerty that “he’ll be fine” after taking a Roman Josi slap shot to the mask. Whatever that means, who knows, but he’s the last player the Black and Gold can afford to lose for a significant amount of time.

Power play starting to click

.@ToreyKrug‘s PPG tonight pic.twitter.com/YaO1ozoREL

— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) January 13, 2017

At times, the Bruins power play killed whatever momentum they had during the course of the game. Lately, though, it’s been giving them that positive momentum boost during the course of a 60-minute contest.

With the Bruins down 1-0, Krug’s blast from the point after recovering a clearing attempt from the Predators PK unit gave his team the equalizer at 8:08 of the second period. That gave the Bruins their third power play goal in two games. With the goal, Krug now has 11 points in his last 12 games with six of those points coming on the man advantage.

Starting the month near the bottom of the league with the man advantage, the Bruins have climbed to 23rd on the power play converting at a success rate of 15.9 percent. There’s still some work to do with the man advantage – and their last attempt on the PP is a good indicator as to why – but things are starting to come around on one end of their special teams unit.

Will Blidh hear from the league?

Aside from David Pastrnak’s suspension earlier in the year, the Bruins have rarely heard from the NHL Department of Player Safety. That may change on Friday after Blidh’s high hit on Josi in the first period. Blidh was given a five-minute major for interference and Josi did not return as the result of the hit.

It looked much worse in person and it’s hard to blame the officials for calling things the way they did. Looking at the replay, Josi’s stick actually made contact with his head after Blidh hit him in the chin. Whether the act is suspension worthy or not is anyone’s guess, but we’ll be sure to find out soon.

Shall Blidh be given supplemental discipline, Jimmy Hayes would likely return to the lineup. The former Boston College product and Dorchester native was a healthy scratch against the Blues and Predators to close out the road trip.