Bruins KO Stars on Causeway Street

Video courtesy of Biz Jacobs

BOSTON – Its pretty safe to say that Bruins fans got their money’s worth Thursday night at the TD Garden.

Not only did the sellout crowd of 17,565 on Causeway Street see a 6-3 victory, but they also saw a few championship caliber bouts in the opening moments. Just one second into the contest, Gregory Campbell dropped the gloves with Steve Ott.

While Ott might have won that fight, it didn’t stop the team from the dropping the gloves once again.

Just one second after the Campbell-Ott battle, fellow Merlot line forward Shawn Thornton dropped the gloves with Stars forward Krystofer Barch and two seconds after that, Adam McQuaid dropped the gloves with Brian Sutherby. That’s three fights in four seconds, totaling 30 minutes in penalties.

But while Campbell noted that the game was going to be physical before the opening face-off, he was surprised to see the events unfolding in the first four seconds.

“We were told before that it was going to be a physical game,” Campbell said about the opening moments. “But I didn’t expect it to start like that.”

Perhaps there was some bad blood boiled over from the meeting between the two teams the last time they met on November 1, 2008. Perhaps there was some bad blood between Ott (as if he needs any more with Boston fans) and Campbell dating back to March of 2009.

Either way it seemed to have brought this close group even closer together.

“We’re a tight group. We’ve always said that and we all know that,” said Patrice Bergeron who had two goals in the contest. “We get along really well off the ice and we try to bring that on the ice.”

“I think the last time they came in here it was a rough game and thought maybe they wanted to set the tone and try to intimidate us, but I think it worked in our favor,” said Bruins forward Brad Marchand who was with team’s AHL affiliate in Providence during the last Bruins-Stars contest.

The Bruins seemed to feed off the energy from the opening moments and got two quick goals from Milan Lucic (who scored his 21st of the season just 31 seconds after the last fight) and Bergeron (at 1:20) 45 seconds apart.

By the time the first period ended, both teams dropped the gloves four times – the last with Andrew Ference and Adam Burish at 3:51 – and the Bruins had a 4-0 lead thanks to Bergeron’s tally at 9:35 – his 19th of the year – and Thornton’s eighth of the year at 16:01.

While Dallas ultimately found its way back into the contest with goals from Karlis Skrastins (at 10:36 of the second), Brendan Morrow (a shorthanded goal just 45 seconds into the third) and Brad Richards (just 2:48 after Morrow’s tally) Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask held strong and made some timely saves and made several key during a five-minute penalty kill after Daniel Paille got called for a game misconduct for a hit to the head. Rask made 30 saves for his fifth win of the season.

After the game, Tuukka noted that he also got settled in during those opening moments of the contest.

“It’s nice to see some offensive power especially the way we started the game,” he said. “Three fights and then a response with four goals [in the first period]. That’s a good sign and it helped me out today.”

Although things got away a bit when Dallas pulled within one, Bruins coach Claude Julien called his timeout after Richards’ goal just to settle his team down.

The Bruins settled down and rookie Tyler Seguin responded just 1:58 later with his eighth goal of the year and his first tally since the team’s 6-0 victory over Ottawa back on January 11.

“I felt that we had gotten away from our game a little bit and gave them some opportunities and I didn’t want us to panic,” Julien said. “I told the guys to relax. I told the guys that we had to get back to certain things and then it was basically just telling them to calm down. Obviously we were able to get that big goal from Tyler and that gave us some breathing room again.”

Marchand added an empty netter late in the period to seal the 30th victory of the season for the Black and Gold.