Torey Krug isn’t exactly a fighter, but that didn’t appear to give him any sort of pause when he made the decision to engage Blake Coleman on Wednesday afternoon.
In the final minutes of the first period in the Boston Bruins’ eventual loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning, Coleman laid a big, open-ice hit on Krug’s defensive partner, Brandon Carlo. Krug had the puck in the neutral zone at the time of the hit, but he fired it away so he could jump Coleman, resulting in a fight.
Neither are known for their fighting ability, but Coleman is no slouch. So Krug engaging him with nary a worry at a time when the Bruins, down 2-0 at that point, needed some sort of spark was received well on the bench.
“That was great, that was great for us,” Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy said over Zoom following the game. “It was great to create that energy for us on the bench. Torey is a guy who takes on a leadership role without having a letter, we know that he’s someone who always comes to compete. And at that point in the game, being down two goals, for him to step up there — it was a hit that he didn’t appreciate — and to step up there and fight and just really bring passion and emotion into the game, that was awesome for us to see, especially in this setting here when you kind of have to create your own energy, I think he saw that as an opportunity. And that was awesome out of him and something that got our bench going, and we always appreciate when we stand up for each other.”
If declaring a winner, it would be Coleman. The two tussled more than anything, but it was the Bolts winger that wrestled Krug to the ground.
Regardless of result, Cassidy has grown to expect that Krug will answer the bell if he needs to.
“Well he’ll do it,” Cassidy said on a postgame video call. “He’s not afraid to drop the mitts with anybody. And you saw (Matt Grzelcyk) went right after again. Two of our smaller defensemen, it just came natural to them. That’s what I love about our team. These guys have each other’s backs. They’re going to stick up for one another, and I’m sure Tampa was thinking the same thing. So, at the end of the day, that’s our group. They’ve always been that way, any new player that comes in usually learns that. Torey obviously learned it from the (Zdeno Chara’s) and the (Dennis) Seidenberg’s when he came here or the (Johnny) Boychuck’s and he’s going to pass it on to the Griz’s and the (Jeremy) Lauzon’s type of thing. So, it’s great to see. Torey is a leader on our team. We have some obviously more grizzled veteran leaders, but he’s very good with the middle of the road group. And we appreciate when he does bring that to the table.”
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Here are some other notes from Wednesday’s Bruins-Lightning game.
— If nothing else, the energy was significantly better for the Bruins on Wednesday as opposed to Sunday’s loss to the Philadelphia Flyers.
It did take Boston a little bit to get going, though Cassidy disagrees with the notion that it played a poor first period.
“I think we competed much harder,” Chris Wagner, who had a goal in the game, said. “I think that hit (on Carlo) and Torey’s fight kind of got us going. I thought we battled hard in the corners and I thought we had two tough bounces on those first two goals but I thought we competed way better overall for the 60 minutes.”
— After missing Sunday’s game, Tuukka Rask was back in net for his first game since mid-March.
It was a solid enough performance for Rask, who turned away 32 of the 35 shots he found. The first goal he didn’t appear to see the rebound he gave up, which allowed Brayden Point to poke it home.
The second came when the puck made two deflections en route from the point to the goal. Nothing he can do about that.
And the third was on a rush where he made the initial stop, but Tyler Johnson’s head full of steam won out and allowed him to put away the winner.
Rask indicated after the game he felt that he was moving and tracking the puck well, which must be promising for the Bruins. Overall it was a good enough showing considering the layoff he just had.
— This is a weird setup, and the Bruins are the ones feeling the impact of that.
Though they were the Presidents’ Trophy winners for having the best regular season, with two losses now the absolute highest seed they can get is third, but that will be predicated on how the Washington Capitals play against the Flyers.
