For the third consecutive season, playoff hockey will be played at TD Garden. The Bruins officially punched their ticket to the dance Saturday night with a 7-3 victory over the Florida Panthers.

In the victory,—their fourth in a row—12 different Bruins picked up a point, 13 if you want to count Jaroslav Halak.

The win was another dominating performance by the Bruins, who have won the first three games of a road trip that ends Monday night in Tampa Bay.

With a playoff berth in their back pocket, and Tampa Bay already clinching the Presidents’ Trophy, all is left for the Bruins to do is to lock up home-ice advantage in their soon-to-be official first round series with the Maple Leafs.

“It’s a big win for us. Every year teams are battling hard for every point to get into the playoffs, it’s a grind,” said captain Zdeno Chara who is fresh off a one-year contract extension and his 200th career NHL goal.

“If you don’t play consistently well and play strong throughout the whole year, it’s going to catch up. Then you have to gain some ground at the end. Those are very precious games.”

Consistently well is the perfect way to describe how the Bruins regular season—which still has seven games left—has gone.

What has been most impressive to me about this Bruins team has been their ability to win hockey games when things are not always going their way. Injuries, and issues with secondary scoring could have easily caused more problems than it did, but the team found ways to move past it.

Because of the constant line juggling that injuries and inconsistencies from several individual players caused, it’s still a little unclear how the Bruins lines will look when the playoffs kick off in April.

But based on what they’ve done in the last four games since being reunited, I think the new-look fourth line is one that should go untouched.

Just 2:33 into Saturday’s contest it was the fourth line giving the Bruins the early spark as Noel Acciari’s fifth goal of the season gave the Bruins an early jump.

They would cruise from there.

With Acciari centering Joakim Nordstrom and David Backes, the trio has provided head coach Bruce Cassidy more than he had to expect.

In the 35:19 of 5v5 ice time the three has skated together in their last four games, the Bruins new forth line has a 53.97 Corsi For Percentage, a plus-eight differential in scoring chances, and a plus-three goal differential.

Right now, the line is doing it all, especially David Backes.

It’s been a difficult season for the $6 million veteran. He’s been bounced up and down, and in and out of the lineup, trying to catch onto any role he can. He’s even taken it upon himself to be more involved in the fighting aspect of the game, a role he often played in his days with the Blues.

But throughout the 63 games he’s played this year, Backes has been at his best when he’s been on the fourth line.

“I think he’s kind of found himself again and his style of play on that line where he’s able to be hard and physical. Play a solid role for us without being a guy that puts pressure on himself to score and put up the big numbers he used to,” said Cassidy.

“And that’s fine. He’s given us some solid play for 10, 12, 14 minutes, whatever it is. And I think he feels a lot better about his game and as a result, he has more jump in his game. Good for him. We’ve kind of found a place for him, It’s better late than never. I hope it continues.”

The Bruins lead the Maple Leafs by seven points for second in the Atlantic division. At this point it seems more of a matter of when, than if, the Bruins lock themselves into the division’s second seed. Once they do so, there won’t be much left to play for in any regular season games that remain.

But for Acciari and his two new line mates, the three want to go out and prove that they're deserving of ice time. Once Marcus Johansson is back, someone will be forced out of the lineup.

But until then, the three are going to attack things as if they’ll be side-by-side in what they hope is a run that ends with them parading the Stanley Cup through the streets of Boston.

Working on developing more chemistry will only help them reach that goal.

“We’ve got a lot of capable forwards and finding that chemistry would be great, especially going into the playoffs,” said Backes.

“There’s going to no surprises and we’ll find that chemistry and we’ll do our work and whatever that is to try and help us win games. If’s that scoring goals, great, but if that’s just good offensive zone draws, we’re going to take those as feathers in our cap that we’re contributing to a team win.”

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