"The Penguins had tried this before, you know.

Fact is, they had made a habit of building two-goal leads against Boston this season.

Made a habit of squandering them, too.

And so it was again Saturday at TD Garden, when their 2-0 advantage melted into a 2-2 tie in a 13-second span of the second period.

At that point, their meetings with the Bruins didn't seem to be a season series so much as they were a recurring nightmare.

"You don't want to say, 'Here we go again,' " winger Mike Rupp said.

The Penguins could have. Maybe should have, considering how their previous games with Boston had unraveled.

Not this time, though.

Those two goals were the only ones the Bruins got, and the Penguins claimed a 3-2 victory after Jordan Staal scored on a close-range backhander at 3:25 of the third period.

The victory raised their record without center Sidney Crosby, who is recovering from a concussion, to 2-2-1 and their overall mark to 28-14-4. It left them one point behind first-place Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference.

Just as important, it exorcised any demons conjured by those earlier losses to the Bruins, who began the day with a 9-0 edge on the Penguins in third-period goals.

"It's 9-1 now," Penguins goalie Marc-Andre Fleury said, smiling.

Yeah, in large part because of Fleury. Again.

He finished with 44 saves -- 20 of those in the final period -- and was a difference-maker, as he has been so often the past couple months.

"I'd say this is some of the best hockey I've seen him play for a long stretch," coach Dan Bylsma said.

Fleury was beaten by a Dennis Seidenberg slap shot when Daniel Paille of the Bruins gave him no chance to see the puck and, 13 seconds later, by a Michael Ryder wrist shot that came through the legs of Penguins defenseman Zbynek Michalek.

"Fleury sees the puck most of the time and makes that save," Ryder said, "so I was just trying to use the defenseman as a screen.

It worked.

So did the timeout Bylsma called immediately, because it prevented the Penguins from losing their focus or composure in the wake of those goals."