BOSTON - Trailing by a goal heading into what could have been the final 20 minutes of hockey at TD Banknorth Garden this season, the loudspeakers here started to blast Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin” And as silly as the cliché might sound, the Bruins haven’t stopped believing. They haven’t stopped believing all season long.

In what was probably the club's finest hour in the 13 year-history of the new barn on Causeway Street, the Bruins battled back not once, not twice, but thrice to beat the Canadiens 5-4 and send this series back to Montreal for a decisive seventh game on Monday Night.

“We’ve got a few guys who have won Stanley Cup’s before, so they talk,” forward David Krejci said. “What we should do. What we shouldn’t do. If we’re down a goal, or up a goal. And in the third period, we just never stopped believing we could do it.”

The fact that the Bruins are even here is a surprise to everyone not currently on the club’s payroll. And those of us who had taken the first sips of the Kool-Aid after a quick start last October quickly dispersed trying to picture Glen Metropolit as a second-line center in the wake of Patrice Bergeron’s injury, or after Chuck Kobasew, the team’s second leading scorer with just 22 tallies, went down on March 25.

“You know sometimes being unlucky can bring you some positive things,” Head Coach Claude Julien said. “The injuries we’ve been through this year have given us that identity because we’ve had to insert some young guys in the lineup, different players in bigger roles and that’s just helped our team grown and become resilient.

Resiliency. That’s been the key word for the 2007-08 Boston Bruins. It’s been the resiliency to battle into the playoffs without a major scoring threat, or without a franchise goaltender between the pipes. To fight through mid-winter and pre-playoff slumps. And to go from the brink of elimination to the brink of embarrassing the league’s most prestigious franchise on their own home soil.

Still, as the cliché’s would suggest. There’s still one game left to be played, and one of those guys with Stanley Cup success, Aaron Ward knows that there's still work to be done.

“We’ve got to take the approach that the cards are still stacked against us,” Ward said. “It’s a learning experience and a lot of guys are really getting christened right now and hopefully we can maintain the lack of tension in the locker room. The idea going in just play your system, play hard and see what results you get.”

And if those results continue favorably, we'll see something we haven't seen in a city spoiled by its recent sporting dominance. A true underdog, rising to the top with a different hero every night. Tonight it was Marco Sturm, who scored the game-winning goal with 2:37 left to play. It was Marc Savard in Game 3, or a guy like David Krejci finding his stride as the spotlight gets bigger. And contributions from everyone, from Zdeno Chara to Vladmir Sobotka have blessed Julien's club with the depth and chemistry it hasn't had in years.

“Down the stretch in March and April, we really came close together as a team,” Sturm said. “We’re showing that in the playoffs.”

And they'll really show it if they win Game 7. Having the momentum is one thing, execution is another.

“You don’t want to finish the season in two days,” Krejci said. “We’ve got to come out the same as we did today and never stop believing. We’ve got to play our best and do our job.”