BOSTON -- When a team goes nearly three full games without scoring a goal, it grasps for anything that might provide an edge.

So while Patrice Bergeron is growing his Fu Manchu to support the Movember Foundation's efforts to promote men's health, he might consider going for a full "Lanny McDonald" if giving up shaving means he can be the Bruins' offensive savior.

And for the heck of it, it might be time for a team "mustache-palooza" if growing facial hair can help Boston snap out of its recent scoring slumber.

Of course, the Bruins won't have to go such lengths to avoid becoming an offensive laughingstock if Bergeron's teammates follow his lead and get their rear ends to the net the way the 24-year-old center did in the Bruins' 2-1 shootout loss to Montreal on Thursday night at TD Garden.

In addition to tying the score with a 6-on-5 goal from the side of the net with 51.7 seconds left -- snapping the Bruins' scoreless streak at 192 minutes, 6 seconds -- Bergeron had another goal disallowed by video replay and was an overall menace around the crease all evening.

"You wish more guys would jump on his back and follow suit," coach Claude Julien said after the game.

To his credit, Zdeno Chara did follow Bergeron's lead, at least during that extra-attacker scramble. After Bergeron won the faceoff back to the point, the captain was banging heads in front of the goal, which allowed Bergeron to get to the rebound.

Now that two guys have seen the light, there's a chance that at least 11 other forwards and maybe a couple rush-joining defensemen could finally make the switch from spectators to active participants in some old-fashioned crease crashing and puck burying.

"We're not being quite assertive enough around the net," defenseman Dennis Wideman said. "We're getting scoring chances, and we're kind of still a little bit hesitant. We're not going in there and knocking them down or knocking them off the puck.

"We could still be a little more aggressive, a little more hard on the puck in the scoring areas, probably. [When] we get a chance, we've got to get in there like bulls."

To their credit, the Bruins weren't claiming any moral victories after earning a point against the Habs. They all claimed before the game that anything less than two points would be unacceptable, and they stuck to their guns after the dramatic comeback. For a team that was second in the league in scoring last season and had such high expectations at the outset of this campaign to go what seemed like eons without a goal is unacceptable. And finally scoring one goal on 43 shots shouldn't be cause for celebration.

But you can take some solace in an increased effort. While getting blanked in New York and Detroit, the Bruins' offense was all about quantity, not quality. On Thursday night, Boston bolstered the quality department, even if there were still too many chances left on the table.

"It's one step forward to get that goal, to get that point," Bergeron said. "But we need to get two points. We need to win games. And we have to take it upon ourselves and do it."

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