The Boston Bruins could make or break the Stanley Cup playoff hopes for a number of teams, including their own, in their most important week of the regular season.

The Black and Gold will play four games next week beginning with Monday night’s road tilt at the Air Canada Centre against the Toronto Maple Leafs, the team closest behind them in the Atlantic Division standings and currently holding down the second wild card spot. That makes the young, up-and-coming Leafs the biggest threat to overtake the B’s for the third spot in the division. Currently the Leafs trail the Bruins by three points with one game in hand, so a regulation loss could be a damaging blow for a struggling young hockey team that hasn’t beaten a team in playoff position in more than a month.

Following the Toronto showdown, the Bruins immediately set their sights on the second night of a back-to-back with a home date against an Ottawa Senators team that’s beaten the Bruins badly twice already this season. The Sens also look like a strong candidate to face the Bruins in the first round of the playoffs, and only four points separate the two teams when it comes to possible home ice advantage in a potential playoff series.

That’s looking ahead just a smidge, but the bottom line is that the Bruins have to start getting some confidence to bust through the Guy Boucher trap and generate the same level of offense that they do against just about everybody else. Those two divisional games would represent a challenging enough as it is, but the Black and Gold close out the week with games against the other two teams closely trailing them behind Toronto, the Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Islanders.

The Bolts have lost some momentum after a hot stretch and trail the Bruins by five points after losing to the Capitals on Saturday night, so a regulation win for the B’s over Tampa on Thursday night could all but eliminate their chances of catching up. The Bruins will finish off the week of playoff-level challenges with a trip to Brooklyn to face a reeling Islanders team that’s lost two in a row, and trails the Bruins by four points entering Sunday’s action.

Above and beyond the four worthy, desperate opponents with a taste of the playoffs in their mouths that the B’s are prepping for this week, this will also be an excellent playoff litmus test for Boston against the kind of teams they’ll be facing should they qualify for the postseason. It will make for intense, focused and physical hockey on the ice, and it will go a long way toward letting everybody know to expect out of these new-look Bruins this spring.