Tim Thomas and the Boston Bruins have been playing their best hockey in the last month, dismantling the rival Montreal Canadiens and the Philadelphia Flyers in the first two series of the 2011 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Yet Thomas believes that he and the Bruins aren't just playing good hockey, they're playing championship hockey.

"I think it was a confidence that grew throughout the year," Thomas said of the team that won the Northeast Division and entered the playoffs as the No. 3 seed in the East. "Till you get to the playoffs, you don't really know that for sure what you have as a group. I think that the first round against Montreal was a testing ground for us. We started it out right way from some adversity, getting down in the series, 2-0. We started to find out what we were made of.

"Come to find out, we're made of some pretty stern stuff. We have a lot of the things that it takes to win a championship, hopefully all of them."

Thomas and the Bruins kick off the Eastern Conference Finals against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday night at TD Garden. Puck drop is set for 8:00 p.m. EDT and the game can be seen on Versus and heard on the radio on WBZ-FM 98.5 The Sports Hub.