In the overall scheme of the Bruins’ Game 2 loss to the Florida Panthers, Taylor Hall’s goal was the ultimate nothing burger. The B’s were getting blown out by the Cats and Hall’s goal that made it 6-3 only made the final score look more respectable than it deserved to be.

Hall originally thought so, too. But in hindsight, it might have been just the thing to get the speedy winger going. Riding a four-point day in Game 4, Hall went into Wednesday’s Game 5 at the Garden as the B’s leading scoring in this playoff run with 4-3-7 totals in the first four games.

Before he scored that late goal, Hall had not gotten on the scoreboard in the first playoff game nor did he notch a point in the final three games of the regular season when he came back from the injury that knocked him out of the lineup on February 25.

“It was a nothing goal, for sure. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but maybe that did allow me to (think) ‘OK, at least I’ve gotten on the board.’ I know Trent Frederic said to me after the game, he’s like ‘They shouldn’t have let you score that goal because you never know what can happen if you get going,’” said Hall on Wednesday morning. “So maybe it helped, but at the end of the day I was building my game and the three regular season games I played, they weren’t fantastic by any means, but I was trying to round my game into form and round my game into playoff form. I feel like that helped.”

Hall’s confidence is definitely on the uptick. That was obvious with his nail-in-the-coffin breakaway goal he scored in Game 4 on which it appeared that goalie Sergei Bobrovsky had very little chance of stopping. But he relates that confidence back to the details he’s been working on since he came back from the injury.

“It’s getting better,” said Hall. “The last couple of games were solid for me. I think defensively and my positioning on the ice and where I am in relation to the puck has been a lot better. And that’s allowed me to generate some chances and feel more like myself offensively. I think it comes from the other side of the puck. That’s been a focus of mine since I really got back from the injury, rounding out my game into a playoff type game that I can rely on every night and there’s not a lot of thinking involved and that’s kind of how I feel now.”

Helping Hall’s third period explosion was also Jim Montgomery’s decision to put him on a line with fellow speedster Jake DeBrusk and center Pavel Zacha. There were some moving pieces going into Wednesday’s potential close-out game, but it appeared that the plan was to go back with that trio.

“They’re two obviously really good players and guys that are playing well,” said Hall. “They finished the season strong, those two guys. The three of us combined, I don’t know how many games we’ve started out as a line before the game but we’ve been together at times throughout the season and we’ve produced and played well. I can remember a goal at the Rangers, in Vegas, some big plays that we came together on. They’re fun guys to play with. Jake is always around the net, a nifty player, responsible. Pavs, you’ve seen him blossom this year with all the talent and power and skill that he has. I’m excited for it.”…

Montgomery has shifted his lines around all series. His hand has been forced by injury in some instances and on educated hunches on others. Going into Game 5, most of those hunches had worked. Montgomery said it’s helped that he’s done it all season.

“The reason I like to move people around is so that if I do it in the third period of a game, if it’s a Game 6 or a Game 7, the players are not thinking I’m panicking. They’re thinking it might give us an edge,” said Montgomery.

What Montgomery does not like to do is make snap, in-game decisions to blow up his lines.

“I think experience in coaching tells you not to get too excited with a one-off, positively or negatively,” said Montgomery. “You see something twice, that’s usually when you go ‘OK, he’s on tonight’ or ‘he’s off.’ Then you go to talking to him and seeing what he’s not doing that he usually does well and then remind him of what makes him really good. Then if the bells don’t go off, it’s time to (say) ‘sit beside me.’”

But Montgomery makes an effort to remain positive because he feels being negative doesn’t get him anywhere. He reads his cues from not just what’s going on n the ice, but from his players’ body language as well as the conversations he hears them having on the bench.

“Things can go awry for me when I start talking to individuals about their individual mistakes. These guys know if they made a mistake or they made a great play,” said Montgomery. “If you pat them on the back when they made a great play or you give them knuckles on a goal or a great block? That goes a long way. Whereas ‘What were you thinking on that backcheck?’ That doesn’t go very far.”…

While Montgomery can employ some typical playoff gamesmanship when it comes to his lineup, he wasn’t playing around in the morning when asked if he was thinking of going with Jeremy Swayman over Linus Ullmark to keep the younger goalie from going stale.

“Ullmark’s just played really well. There hasn’t been any reason for us (to change),” said Montgomery. “We’re completely confident in Sway, obviously, because of the great season he had. But we like the way Ullmark’s been handling the puck, the way he’s been smothering it, not giving up any rebounds. We just like the way it’s been going.”…

David Krejci, who is believed to be suffering from some sort of arm or elbow injury (“upper body” has been the club’s term), continued skating on his own on Wednesday, his second day of skating. He handled the puck a little more than he did on Tuesday, though he wasn’t yet shooting with any gusto.