On the scoreboard, the Bruins went down without much of a fight in Wednesday night’s 6-1 Game 2 loss to the Florida Panthers. In the most literal sense, however, Boston was perfectly willing to punch back in the third period.
The two teams combined for a whopping 136 penalty minutes in the final 10 minutes of the game, with nearly every whistle resulting in full-line scrums and multiple penalties. A total of 12 players -- six on each team -- were sent to the showers early courtesy of 10-minute misconducts.
On the Florida side, it wasn’t at all surprising to see Matthew Tkachuk in the middle of some of the action. But the Bruin who wound up actually dropping the gloves with Tkachuk was a bit of a surprise: David Pastrnak.
With 7:18 left in the game, and more than 100 penalty minutes already accumulated in the period, Pastrnak and Tkachuk both jumped over the boards and immediately squared off for a fight that had clearly been planned ahead of time, and that featured the biggest star on their respective teams and two of the biggest stars in the game today.
In terms of experience, it was not a fair fight. It was just the second fight of Pastrnak’s career, and his first since 2018. According to hockeyfights.com, Tkachuk has 25 career fights to his name. That difference showed. Pastrnak took a couple wild swings early on, but Tkachuk eventually got the takedown.
It wasn’t really about winning the fight for Pastrnak, though. It was about stepping up as a team leader and showing that he and the Bruins weren’t going to be pushed around. Tkachuk had taunted Charlie Coyle after the Panthers’ fifth goal, and Brandon Montour had done the same to Brad Marchand after the sixth, screaming right in the Boston captain’s face and setting off one of the many battle royals.
“I’m proud of Pasta,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said. “There’s so many guys out there pushing after the whistle when the linesmen are there. Pasta and Tkachuk, they just went out there and fought. That’s what you like. You like your hockey players to be competitors.”
There was one aspect of the fight that Montgomery didn’t like, though. Tkachuk threw two extra punches while Pastrnak was already down on the ice with the officials jumping in, widely considered a no-no in the hockey fighting code.
“It’s not part of the game for me,” Montgomery said.
Pastrnak clearly wasn’t happy about it either, as he responded by jumping back on Tkachuk and trying to land a couple extra punches of his own.
Pastrnak acknowledged after the game that he’s “not a very experienced fighter” and “probably should’ve done better,” but also made it clear that he’s not afraid of Tkachuk.
“I’m not afraid of him, to be honest,” Pastrnak said. “I can take a punch, and I’d do anything for these guys here.”
Pastrnak's teammates should be fired up for Game 3 after seeing their best player step up like that. There is, of course, another side of the argument that will say it was an unnecessary risk for Pastrnak to take. We would certainly be hearing a lot of that if Pastrnak had gotten hurt. But he didn't, so it's a lot easier to praise Pastrnak than question him.
The fight, which resulted in a five-minute major and 10-minute misconduct for each participant, did essentially put an end to the extracurricular activity for the night. A slash by Parker Wotherspoon was the only penalty the rest of the way after that.
Before Pastrnak, five other Bruins had already been sent off with 10-minute misconducts: Pat Maroon, Justin Brazeau, Trent Frederic, Charlie McAvoy and Brad Marchand. Five other Panthers had preceded Tkachuk: Nick Cousins, Eetu Loustarinen, Dmitry Kulikov, Niko Mikkola and Sam Reinhart.
It remains to be seen if the NHL decides to fine anyone for any of their actions, but it seems pretty safe to say that nothing from either side rose to the level of a suspension.
The bad blood, which already existed between these two rivals, certainly won’t be going away for the rest of this series, although it seems unlikely we’ll get another 136-penalty-minute period.