Sometimes, you have absolutely no business even being in the hockey game, let alone winning it.

In your unofficial memory bank of season-x, it’s found next to “losing despite peppering a backup for nearly 40 shots”, and filed under the “I don’t know how, but we’ll take it” category of your club’s 82-game schedule.

Every team, everywhere has games like the Boston Bruins did tonight. They’re rarely, however, as lucky as the B’s were to skate off with another two points in the standings.

Entering play without the services of top six winger Loui Eriksson, out with a confirmed concussion courtesy of the Sabres’ John Scott, the move back to Boston for a date with the NHL’s best team in the San Jose Sharks didn’t exactly inspire much confidence given the B’s situation.

On the second leg of a back-to-back that began with last night’s physical affair in Buffalo, the lone fresh legs in the Bruins’ lineup came with Jordan Caron back in, along with the Bruins’ lights out goaltender, 26-year-old Tuukka Rask. And through 20 minutes, that was clear as day.

Wait, 20 minutes? Strike that, all 60.

“There’s no question that Tuukka played a really solid game tonight,” B’s defensemen Adam McQuaid noted. “He gave us a chance to win, kept us in there and made some big saves for us and there’s going to be nights we’re going to need that and without some of the saves he made it could have been a different game We tried to stick with it and we were able to get the result we wanted.”

Absolutely pasted with shots from the high-flying San Jose attack in the opening frame, Rask did everything he could and more, stopping all 16, yes -- 16, shots thrown towards his net. The Bruins, completely smothered by the Sharks’ three-zone game that stifled any attempts for breakouts, mustered up just three of their own in the opening frame, leaving Rask on an island.

But Rask, ever a goaltender up for a challenge, answered the bell with gusto.

And with dazzling, heart-stopping save after save.

“I just wanted to get a good start,” said Rask. “Sometimes it’s better when you face a lot of shots in the first period, you kind of get yourself in the game if you were able to save the pucks. It’s more of a mental challenge to force yourself to be at work and fully aware of what’s going on out there. Lucky that they had so many shots and I was able to save all of them in the first.”

Lucky, really, doesn’t even begin to describe it. Throughout the night, there’s no denying the layers the Sharks put on Boston’s attack, frequently bottling the Black-and-Gold up in the neutral zone and leading to rush-ending dump-ins or turnovers. But with just a bit of daylight, the opportunistic Bruins wasted no time, as Jarome Iginla finally came through, striking with his first of the year.

Giving the Bruins a 1-0 lead with just over a minute to play in the middle frame, the 36-year-old Iginla, a notorious slow-starter throughout the twilight of his career, didn’t sound like a forward looking for style points with his first goal as a Bruin. “It’s been longer than I would’ve liked, but it sure felt good to get it here and to get it at home and it being a tight game and obviously it was a good bounce,” he said with a grin after the game. “It wasn’t exactly how I envisioned it, shooting it in or whatever you take, but at this point you take anything or anytime actually you take any of them.”

Setting the B’s up with a one-goal edge after 40 minutes of play, the cheers of an unexpectedly delighted Boston crowd were silenced just 18 seconds into the frame. On a bang-bang play in the Boston zone, Patrick Marleau shut everybody in the building up with his eighth goal of the year, knotting the B’s and Sharks up at 1-1 in a game that had been all San Jose.

By this head-to-head’s track record, this would be the Bruins’ unraveling.

Without a win at the Garden against the Sharks since 2002 -- and holding an 0-4-0 record against San Jose in Boston since trading then-captain Joe Thornton to the Teal and Black, outscored 17 to 6 over that stretch -- history told us that the B’s would piss it all away and let yet another absolutely stellar outing from their Finnish netminder go for naught.

Not this time.

Clinging to the deadlock, No. 40 stood tall time and time again.

Dueling with fellow countryman Antti Niemi, No. 40 stood tall in the Boston crease, turning the Sharks away continuously throughout the final frame, setting the stage for a sure three-point night that the B’s had no business even being in.

Again, not this time.

Charging into the San Jose zone with under 20 seconds to go, hulking power forward Milan Lucic bumbled and stumbled his way along the way before dropping it back to McQuaid, who with less than five seconds to go, fired a shot at Niemi, only to have it successfully tipped by David Krejci and into the back of the Sharks’ cage with just :00.8 to go in the game.

2-1, Bruins.

The Sharks, a team without a regulation loss through the first nine games of the season, were leaving Boston’s shoddy ice with a ‘1’ in the middle column of their record. Like that, and in less than the blink of an eye, hockey showed its cruel side, robbing (at the very least) a point away from Niemi and the Sharks, a team that thoroughly controlled the pace of play for 59:59.2. Ouch, man.

“It’s one of those things I kind of got caught half way, but we played a good game tonight,” Joe Thornton, captain of the Sharks and a Bruin from 1997 to 2005, said after the loss. “We probably deserve better tonight, but that’s the way hockey goes sometimes.”

There’s really no other way to say it, quite honestly. San Jose was the better team tonight, and it wasn’t even close. Throughout the night, the Sharks simply skated circles around a winded-looking Boston club, and without Rask, this one would’ve been an absolute blowout at TD. But for Boston, who moved into tie with the Toronto Maple Leafs for first in the Atlantic with 14 points (and a game in hand) with tonight’s victory, it’s yet another case of the Black-and-Gold finding a way to win.

As lucky as it was, it was still another night where they skated off the ice with two points in hand.

“It’s about finding those kind of ways to win hockey games and we did that tonight. So we stand here and I told the guys, ‘nothing to be ashamed about.’ We handled it well, our goaltender did his job, we were better in the second and then found a way to win in the third,” coach Claude Julien said after the victory, the club’s four straight win. “We can still leave here with our heads up high if you win those games. You can sit here and talk about the one we lost against Detroit that I thought we deserved better; so you lose some sometimes that you should have won and you win some sometimes where you feel that the other team was probably a little better than yours.”

A little, in this case, might be putting it lightly. Tonight, the Bruins straight up robbed the Sharks of two points. But they're not going to complain about that, especially with the way that their goaltender stood on his head from start to finish, giving Rask some healthy bragging rights over Niemi, a fellow Finn. Right?

"We’re so laid back that we don’t really care," Rask said.

Alrighty then!

The Bruins are back at it on Saturday night when they play host to old friends Jaromir Jagr, Michael Ryder, and the rest of the New Jersey Devils.

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