As they have done pretty much all season, the Boston Bruins showed something on Thursday night after a damaging loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs just 48 hours earlier.

Sure, it was the lowly New Jersey Devils and the door to a blowout 8-1 win was opened by a Devils goalie Nico Daws that did not look ready for prime time against a Bruins team that’s turned into an offensive force over the last six weeks. The Bruins are 19-4-2 after losses this season and have time and time again dragged themselves off the mat after losses showing the kind of character, makeup and reaction to adversity that will be mandatory for success in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

“We don’t like losing,” said Boston Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy recently when asked about Boston’s great record after losses this year. “I think our guys the next night (after a loss) are usually ready to go. That’s a credit to the guys in the room for keeping their composure and upping their game when they needed to. You have to get back to your structure and your game and a mentality that, ‘okay, it didn’t go our way the other night but we’re going to stick with the plan. We’re not gonna change everything.’ “You’re always tweaking for your opponent, but at the end of the day you’re going to get back to your game and what’s been successful for you. I think our guys understand that, how we need to play to be in games and win games. As a coach, you have to trust your guys. You might shift a few around here and there but trust your guys to get it done play the right way. Remind them about those things and I think that’s what happens with us through the year.”

The Boston Bruins haven’t lost more than two games in a row all season. Some of that is a testament to the leadership and the determined mindset after a temporary defeat, and some of it is also about the development of excellent goaltending in Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark.

In eliminating the Devils from the playoff picture on Thursday night, it was also about some of the circumstances coming off a disappointing divisional loss.

Once again part of it was the Boston Bruins coaching staff pushing the right buttons while switching in a defense pairing of Mike Reilly and Josh Brown that were factors all over the ice. Brown got into a fight 38 seconds into his very first shift showing that the 6-foot-5 defenseman can throw and take some hellacious punches.

Reilly stepped up and tackled Miles Wood after he leveled Charlie McAvoy with a clean, punishing shoulder-to-shoulder check by the end boards, showing that the No. 1 defenseman isn’t going to be a target down the stretch.

And inserting rookie Marc McLaughlin into the lineup for his NHL debut, where the Billerica kid electrified the crowd by scoring his first NHL goal to the delight of his friends and family cheering section there to see it all go down. It wasn’t just the crowd, either, as the grizzled vets on the Boston Bruins bench looked pretty juiced up too.

“Did you see the bench?” said Cassidy. “The kid hasn’t been here that long, but you could see everybody on the bench was happy for him. He’s been working really hard and doing it in front of your friends and family, that’s a nice thing.”

All of it brought energy and some fight to a team that looked stunned by the speed and skill of the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday night, at least until they started getting things together in the third period of that game.

“We tried to build some good habits in the third period [of the Tuesday loss], have a good working practice yesterday, carry it into tonight, and I think it did,” said Boston Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy. “I think it helped that it looked like New Jersey was trying to be physical early on, so that’s kind of the game we probably needed to get our attention as well, so it worked out both ways.”

But it went according to recent script for the Bruins as well with seven different goal scorers and 12 different guys on the score sheet. The fourth line was the only forward group that didn’t manage to light the lamp, but four of the six defensemen got involved in the offense as well for a Bruins team. The Bruins finished the month of March with some stunning number:

*David Pastrnak finished with 10 goals in 14 games during the month of March and continues to push into the league’s top scorers.

*Brad Marchand was a point-per-game player in March with seven goals and 14 points in 14 games.

*Charlie Coyle, Erik Haula, Taylor Hall and Craig Smith all each finished with 12 points in March as the second and third lines were dangerous offensively.

*Charlie McAvoy finished with 10 assists and 11 points in 14 games while averaging 24:37 of ice time and looks energized by the addition of Hampus Lindholm.

*Trent Frederic had his best month as an NHL player with two goals and nine points in March and is playing like the first-round investment that the B’s made in him as a St. Louis teenager years ago.

*Even Jake DeBrusk finished with goals in three straight games to close out March while making plays all over the ice in Thursday night’s smackdown of the Devils.

It all adds up to the Boston Bruins continuing to finish up strong and playing like a different hockey team since the pieces were rearranged on Jan. 1. The elimination blowout of the Devils was just another chapter in Boston’s season-long story of resilience and showing they are better than they might have been given credit for in the first few months of the season while they were figuring out how to put all the new pieces together.