Thursday’s NHL game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Boston Bruins had the… Thursday’s NHL game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Boston Bruins had the makings of an instant classic.

Boston was going to be out for blood, still angry over Penguins winger Matt Cooke’s blindside hit to Marc Savard’s head. Cooke was not suspended, and seemed to avoid penalization altogether — at least until Pittsburgh met Boston again, or so it seemed..

Then add in Pittsburgh’s battle for the Atlantic Division title and Boston’s fight to keep the last playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. The result: the only time all week the television dial moved off March Madness.

Too bad it was a snore fest.

Boston mustered five shots on Marc-Andre Fleury in the first period. They finally broke into double digits after 40 minutes. Pittsburgh already led 2-0 by then.

By the time the final horn sounded, Fleury earned one of the easier shutouts of his career, a 17-save blanking in a 3-0 victory.

Former Bruin Cam Neely said it best in a radio interview with Boston radio station WEEI Friday. “People expect their athletes to compete and show that they care,” Neely said. “I was disappointed last night.”

The Bruins are in ruins.

Boston did nothing to show they cared about what Cooke did to its star player. At this point, I can’t imagine the Bruins doing anything in the playoffs.

It’s not that the Bruins didn’t go out and slew-foot Sidney Crosby and then sucker-punch Evgeni Malkin. Nobody expected that, especially with the league watching the game extra closely.

It’s that the Bruins didn’t hit anybody. Tough guy Shawn Thornton challenged Cooke to a fight in the game’s second minute. After that, the Bruins were the hockey equivalent of the Washington Generals.

An attendance of 17,565 people turned out to see what should have been a playoff-level hockey game. They booed every time Cooke stepped on the ice. By the second period, though, Cooke stood on the ice, and the fans jeered for a different reason — Boston couldn’t get out of its own zone for two minutes.

Neely said in the radio interview that he wasn’t sure about the team’s leadership anymore. It’s beyond that, though. You need leaders to motivate you for a Wednesday night game against Florida when it’s 83 and sunny outside. Popping in “D2: The Mighty Ducks” should have been enough against Pittsburgh.

Everyone there wanted one thing, and that was hitting. Instead they received 60 minutes of listless play. I’m sure most fans in attendance wished they were watching Washington play Marquette in the NCAA Tournament because that’s what I ended up doing after a while.

The Bruins have people who could’ve run Pittsburgh through the boards. Milan Lucic stands 6-foot-4, weighs 220 pounds and ran Mike Van Ryn through the glass last year. This year he played like a 5-foot-8 center.

They have the tallest NHLer ever in 6-foot-9 Zdeno Chara. Come on, he wrestled when he was a kid. Did his fight with Mike Rupp in the second period inspire his teammates? Nope. Rupp scored Pittsburgh’s third goal. Back to basketball I went.

In the one chance the Bruins had to put Pittsburgh in hell for 60 minutes, they were apparently content to let the Penguins do whatever they wanted.

What happened to the scrappy Boston team that came out of nowhere to win the East last year?

Well, Lucic signed an extension that will pay him $4 million next season, but the Bruins traded 36-goal scorer Phil Kessel to Toronto because they couldn’t afford to keep both.

Only Marco Sturm has 20 goals for Boston this year.

Role player Byron Bitz could’ve roughed up the Penguins on Thursday — except Boston traded him to Florida at the deadline for defenseman Dennis Seidenberg.

Come on, Boston, you were facing the player that knocked out your best forward possibly for the rest of the season.

The Atlanta Thrashers and New York Rangers were breathing down your neck for the last playoff spot. How do you lay an egg against Pittsburgh?

The Bruins apparently thought they could fight Cooke early in the game, and the Penguins would pack up and leave. Nobody told them they had to play for 58 more minutes.

They didn’t even have to win. As Neely said Friday, “If they don’t win, [fans] are okay with that as long as they compete, show that they care and work hard.”

Boston didn’t play hard. They haven’t played hard in a long time. Instead of Savard’s injury motivating them to play better in his absence, they have rolled over. The Thrashers now sit one point behind the Bruins for eighth in the conference — and they too are playing without their ex-superstar, Ilya Kovalchuk.

Atlanta has shown heart. It’s like “Rudy,” “D2,” or “Air Bud.” When you’re the underdog or a basketball-playing dog, you step up your game. The Thrashers know that. Northern Iowa knows that. Boston, it seems, doesn’t know that.

Looks like somebody should have watched basketball on Thursday.