After a three-day wasteland of local sports outcomes marked by unfathomable losses by the Bruins and Red Sox, the New England faithful got a hat trick of victories Thursday night that went a long way toward righting those teams’ respective ships and bodes well for upcoming days.

The Red Sox had taken eight straight road games before dropping a 7-5 decision to the putrid Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday, and even the most die-hard Sox fan had to admit the obvious: you can’t win ’em all. It was nonetheless a difficult acknowledgement, though, because when one compares the two teams’ contrasting payrolls and depths of talent, it is difficult to comprehend how the Red Sox — whose players one through nine all probably out-rate their Maryland counterparts — should ever lose to teams like the Orioles, Devil Rays, Royals, or Blue Jays. But that’s baseball, ain’t it ...

So we put that Tuesday loss aside and blamed it on rotten starting pitching, focusing instead on the truly despicable loss incurred by the Bruins in Montreal. Rarely have I seen such anger expressed by Boston hockey fans as I did after the Bruins’ 4-3 giveaway to the Habs that night. It completely changed the way we looked at that team — at least temporarily — and hearkened back to that gruesome 1989 quarterfinal series when the heavily favored Bruins got swept by the mediocre Buffalo Sabres. But we’ll get back to the ice in a second.

Tuesday’s Red Sox loss was reluctantly accepted, but not Wednesday’s. When your first-place team is shut down by a lousy team with a no-name pitcher in spite of a four-hit effort by your star shortstop who’s sick, that is unacceptable. Suddenly, the glow of Sunday’s sweep in KC was dimmed by those two revolting losses, coupled with a pair of late-inning road victories by the Yankees over a very good Oakland team.

Meanwhile, we had to wait through nearly four full days before the second game of the Celtics’ opening-round NBA playoff series, so until Thursday night’s Game Two, all we had at our disposal was bad news on the doorstep — we couldn’t take one more step. Losses, giveaways, shoulda-beens, debacles, important victories let slip away.

Yes, I even met a girl who sang the blues, and asked her for some happy news. She just smiled and turned away.

Then Thursday dawned, and all that was wrong in our own little enclave of the wide, wide world of sports suddenly became right again (with the exception of one Canadian incident). The rejuvenated Pedro Martinez, just three weeks removed from the Opening Day calamity, continued his return to the pinnacle of hardball prowess with a one-hit shutout effort over the Birds. Then the Bruins, desperately in need of a collective heart transplant after Tuesday’s collapse, completely dominated the Canadiens and came away with a much-needed 5-2 victory, a win which tied the series at two and regained the home-ice advantage for the Black and Gold. And finally, when all looked bleak in the New Garden, Paul Pierce emerged from his shooting slump to hit two huge jumpers and kick-start the Celtics to a 93-85 comeback triumph in this, the most critical game of the best-of-five series. With that crucial victory, the Celtics need just one victory in the next three to move on to the conference semifinals, and can do it quickly if they take care of business against a beat-up and disheartened Sixers club in Philly on Sunday.

The Sox now have the next six games at home against the cellar-dwelling Devil Rays (over the weekend) and yet another face-off against Baltimore before heading to Tampa–St. Pete for a quartet of gimmes against the Rays. The Pinstripers, in contrast, meet the red-hot Mariners out West over the weekend before returning East for back-to-back home series with the A’s and Seattle. It doesn’t need to be said, but this is a key opportunity for Boston to open up some breathing room in the AL East before the Yankees in mid May get their opportunities to paste patsies while the Sox meet the metal of the league.

The Bruins, meanwhile, will return to action on Saturday with an all-is-forgiven welcome from the FleetCenter faithful. Had they not won Thursday, their reception would have been significantly different, but now the B’s are in position to eliminate the Canadiens if they can get strong efforts in two of their next three games, two of which are on home ice. The Causeway joint should be jumpin’ on Saturday, and the Bruins should be able to outlast a short-handed and bloodthirsty Montreal team to take a 3-2 lead, since they did dominate five of the last six periods played in Quebec over the past week. The gallery gods should give them a significant psychological boost, and the Habs will be missing their best player for the remainder of the series.

Ahem. Kyle McLaren’s knockout hit on Richard Zednik, Montreal’s leading scorer, was a very unfortunate subplot to Thursday’s victory, not only because it could lead to McLaren’s own suspension for the next game or so, but because it has changed the whole character of the series itself. What was once a heated rivalry is now seemingly shifting to all-out combat between the long-time foes, and looking past Saturday’s game, I don’t even want to think about the atmosphere in the Molson Centre if the Bruins return there with a 3-2 series lead, looking to clinch. Something ugly is just waiting to happen, and since Canadiens coach Michel Therrien believes that McLaren’s hit was not only vicious, but premeditated, I have little doubt that he will send out his troops to carry out retaliatory measures in the upcoming games. Boston’s Bill Guerin and Joe Thornton are obvious targets, and McLaren’s action, however "innocent," has cast a new light on this series and this long-time rivalry.

I will not defend McLaren’s crunching hit, because I too was disturbed by it, not only because it tainted a well-deserved win and caused the Bruins to lose a great deal of respect among the Montreal hockey zealots, but because it happened at the end of a game well in hand, and because of how it will affect the tenor of the balance of this series. McLaren is neither a goon nor a cheap-shot artist; he cannot possibly be mentioned in the same breath as the Dale Hunters and Tie Domis of the game. The Bruins defenseman is a physical player who always plays tough, but does not necessarily look for trouble or instigate fights — and rarely chooses to participate in them should fisticuffs unfold. He is not known as a dirty player — chippy, maybe — and has never been suspended for any on-ice transgressions.

Nonetheless, I wonder how Boston hockey fans would have reacted had the roles been reversed, and the Bruins’ top scorer was for five minutes nearly comatose on the ice after such a brutal hit. Zednik, who reportedly suffered a concussion, a broken nose, and a fractured cheekbone, is now out of the rest of the playoffs, and while the eighth-seeded Canadiens weren’t exactly realistic contenders for the Cup in the coming weeks, the fact that they lost their best player under these circumstances is nothing the Bruins or their fans should take pride in.

One final note on the Bruins: with the second seed, Philadelphia, on the verge of being ousted in the first round, dubious third-seed Carolina about to take out the always-dangerous Devils, and the fourth-seeded Maple Leafs also losing their top player to injury, Boston’s potential run to the Cup finals just got that much easier. The Bruins still have business to attend to, and next Tuesday’s visit to Montreal will perhaps be the most hostile environment they’ve ever played in, but if they emerge from this series with a victory, the Boston Bruins will certainly be battle-tested and ready for more.

And apparently, big and bad again.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays on BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com.