Defenseman Brandon Carlo said the adversity with help the Boston Bruins 'grow to be the playoff team that we want to be.'

With the midway mark of the NHL season approaching, every salvageable point from each game begins to carry more weight for the bubble teams.

While the Boston Bruins sit comfortably in playoff positioning with 52 points for first in the Atlantic Division, Thursday night’s 6-5 loss against the Pittsburgh Penguins was a cautionary tale of letting a desperate team dominate.

The Penguins are currently two points out of the Eastern Conference wild card slotting and were evidently hungry for a regulation win at TD Garden.

“Teams will force you to increase your pace,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said Thursday. “After the All-Star break, everyone takes a break and then really starts to look at do we have a shot? And then the intensity goes up another fivefold and we need more players to rise to the occasion.”

The Tampa Bay Lightning will be the Bruins’ next test. Saturday night’s game features a Lightning team that is in the second wild card spot in the East with 42 points, one behind the Philadelphia Flyers.

“We have a really good stretch here ahead of us. We’re going to play some really good teams. It’s a good opportunity for us – Tampa coming in, a team that’s always competitive and very dangerous,” Brad Marchand said Thursday.

It’s foolish to count Tampa Bay out at any point in the season – that core knows how to win – but as the postseason hunt nears, the Bruins’ details have to be all that more clean.

“This is the NHL and regardless of which team you’re playing, you’re not a guaranteed win on any single night because each team can come and play hard and it’s very hard to win in this league,” Brandon Carlo said Thursday.

After hosting the Lightning at TD Garden, the Bruins will pack up for a four-game road trip – notably with stops in Arizona and St. Louis. The Coyotes are in the second wild card spot in the Western Conference with 40 points, and the Blues trail behind by just one point – in the fourth slot – with 39.

The Bruins have shown they have a strong enough mixture of skill and depth to beat most teams in the league this year, but they’ll have to manufacture some of the emotion that will be pouring out of their opponents down the stretch.

“You get further along in the year and games continue to get harder, guys start to mesh even more, teams start to mesh even more,” Carlo said. “That’s a good thing, we’re excited to face adversity this year. That’s going to help us grow to be the playoff team that we want to be.”