WILMINGTON, Mass. -- The New England region and its sports fans have been spoiled for more than a decade by all the success enjoyed by the Red Sox, Patriots, Bruins and Celtics.

Since 2001, the longest this market has gone without one of its top four pro teams in a championship game is 32 months -- February 2005 to October 2007.

The Patriots won the Super Bowl in 2001, 2003 and 2004. The Red Sox won their first World Series title in 86 years in 2004. In 2005 and 2006, Boston teams rested. The Red Sox won the World Series again in 2007, and the Patriots reached the Super Bowl. The Celtics won the NBA championship in 2008.

After 2009 went blank, the Celtics returned to the NBA Finals in 2010. The Bruins won their first title in 39 years when they won the Stanley Cup in 2011, and again, the Patriots reached the Super Bowl. In 2012, the teams rested again, before the Red Sox won in 2013 and the Bruins reached the Cup finals.

Now the Patriots return to the Super Bowl to face the Seattle Seahawks on Feb. 1 in Arizona.

The Bruins have been built as perennial Stanley Cup contenders, but this season has been more of a struggle than anything they’ve experienced in recent history. All season they’ve been trying to regain their top form, and believe it or not, they feed off the success of their Boston brethren.

"Definitely, 100 percent,” Bruins veteran forward Milan Lucic said. “You know the feeling of being there, and you know the feeling of winning and winning it all. You see the Patriots making it back to the Super Bowl again it definitely gives you a little bit of a boost.”

The Bruins, like the Red Sox, Patriots and Celtics, want to relive that championship-winning moment when all the hard work and sacrifice pays off. The Bruins had Sunday off, so the players watched as fans as the Patriots were crowned AFC champions.

“As an athlete in the same city you definitely feed off things like that and it definitely gets you excited for the last stretch that we have here, because we know what we’re capable of and we want to be in the same spot as the Pats are come playoff time,” Lucic said.

Long before he moved to Boston to coach the Bruins, Claude Julien had always said he'd been a Patriots fan since childhood. He’s built a relationship with Bill Belichick over the years and both have brought championships to this region. The two occasionally exchange text messages, wishing each other well in their respective endeavors.

Julien watched Sunday’s game from the comforts of home and has a genuine respect for the Patriots and Belichick.

“I like their work ethic and their commitment to playing a system that has worked well for them for years. I like the coach because he doesn’t talk as much as me and every once in a while I’d like to be just like him,” Julien said with a smile.

The ebbs and flows have been more pronounced for the Bruins this season. Injuries and inconsistent lineups are to blame for those struggles. The Patriots had similar struggles at the start of this season, posting a 2-2 record that included a massive 41-14 drubbing at the hands of the Kansas City Chiefs.

Some questioned whether or not the Patriots’ mystique was coming to an end. Some wondered if Brady had hit a wall.

Well, the Patriots used all of that nonsense as motivation and came out the following week and destroyed the Cincinnati Bengals 43-17, which began a seven-game winning streak and helped New England finish the regular season with a 12-4 record.

The Bruins have been trying to find motivation, too. Boston recently built a five-game winning streak before losing to the Columbus Blue Jackets 3-1 on Saturday. The Bruins have two road games remaining against the Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche before the NHL All-Star break. Boston hopes it can regain the momentum it built before Saturday’s embarrassing loss.

“Seeing the way they came out against Cincinnati, [New England] went out there and showed that ‘We’re saving our season and we’re doing it right now,’: Lucic said. "We have to have that same type of approach, especially with two games left before the All-Star break. If it takes feeding off something like that we need to use whatever we can to build any type of momentum for ourselves.”

Lucic, who watched both conference championship games Sunday, should have known better than to send his cousins in Milwaukee a congratulatory text for Green Bay’s victory -- before the NFC Championship Game was over. After Seattle mounted its comeback it actually reminded Lucic of the Bruins’ historic comeback against the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals in 2013.

“Obviously it brings back memories of Game 7 against Toronto,” Lucic said. “You kind of know the feeling that [Seattle's] feeling today and how excited they are to pull something like that off.”

The momentum the Bruins gained from that comeback created a run toward the Stanley Cup finals, before the Chicago Blackhawks defeated Boston in six games.

“It seemed like nothing could go wrong when you’re able to come back from something like that. I’m pretty sure the Seahawks are feeling that right now and I think it’s going to be a real, real fun Super Bowl to watch,” Lucic said.

Lucic, a native of Vancouver, which is only a couple of hours north of Seattle, had been a Seahawks fans until 2009, when he changed his allegiance to the Patriots.

So, who’s going to win the Super Bowl?

“I gotta stick with my team now and keep cheering for the Pats,” he said.

The Bruins still have a lot of work to do if they want to maintain a playoff spot and move up the standings during the remainder of the season. The most important thing is to earn a postseason berth because anything can happen during spring hockey.

The Patriots have the opportunity to finish the 2014 season as Super Bowl champions. If they can it will be their fourth title since 2001. The Red Sox are early favorites to win the AL East in 2015, and it’s obvious the Celtics are continuing to rebuild. Maybe the Bruins can surprise a lot of people and turn their season around, too.

Julien and his players are taking the one-game-at-a-time approach.

When asked if the Bruins were on to Dallas, Julien jokingly attempted his best Bill Belichick imitation, but it didn’t have the same effect.