The Lightning struck three times in the opening 4:31 and Boston never even threatened to make a game of it in a 6-1 loss in Tampa on March 13.
Tuesday night at the Garden, Boston will get its final crack at the Lightning, and the bitter taste of that defeat in the last meeting remains with the Bruins.
"That Tampa game was obviously an embarrassing game for us," Bruins center Chris Kelly said. "If you ask anyone in this locker room, that wasn't our style of hockey. And give them credit, they came out hard and played well and played right to the final buzzer, like they should have. We didn't show up at all that game.
"We're going to need a consistent and a much, much better effort than the last time we played them," Kelly added.
Kelly didn't mince words about the lingering sting of that defeat. But after back-to-back wins this weekend, other Bruins were more concerned with keeping their own game going in the right direction than they were about avenging the loss against the Lightning.
"We want to continue doing what we're doing, I think that's the most important thing," Bruins forward Brian Rolston said. "It doesn't really matter what the other team is doing as long as we're doing the things that make us successful. Obviously they put a pretty good beatdown on us in Tampa, so we're going to have to be prepared tonight."
Bruins coach Claude Julien doesn't see the two goals as mutually exclusive. He wants his club to continue cleaning up its game and get focused for the stretch run and upcoming playoffs, but taking a little motivation from trying to atone for that poor performance in Tampa won't hurt either.
"It's never a bad thing to feel the sting a little bit," Julien said. "There's no doubt we didn't play very well. They came out extremely hard against us and we weren't ready for that. And because of that we lost a game that was a pretty easy win for them, let's put it that way. The way we gave them goals and the mistakes that we made along the way. We have to be a lot better tonight."
Have a question for Douglas Flynn? Send it to him via Twitter at @douglasflynn or send it here. He will pick a few questions to answer every week for his mailbag.
