I'm gonna put my J21 hat on and look at this from another perspective. Maybe another reason the B's appear to be struggling is that there is a lot more parity in the East this year, and not because most teams are bad, but because they're good.
http://www.nhl.com/ice/standings.htm?ty ... v-stn-confMontreal, Pittsburgh, and Tampa appear to be the powerhouses. The Islanders have taken a huge step forward, and Bosc and RW would know better than I, but I think Detroit is doing better this year as opposed to last year as well. Florida is also holding sway and if they can start finding the back of the net with any sort of consistency could possibly run the table. The 18-wheeler appears to be headed toward the cliff in Toronto, but hasn't quite gotten there yet. Also, you take that all in and look at the minor resurgence of the Jackets and Sabres and you have a tougher conference overall. Only Carolina looks like they're really hitting the tank hard, and they're about to get Jordan Staal back, if that means anything at all. Regardless, the West ain't stomping the East like they did last year, and Mirtle is already predicting the point threshold for making the playoffs in the East may be higher than the one in the West. No doubt Boston is not as scary as they used to be, but it looks like a few teams in their conference are just that much better.
I compare it to what happened to the Avs in their own conference. Pretty much every team made strides to improve themselves in the Central, whereas the Avs took a giant step back personnel-wise. The results are pretty much what we all should have expected.