Sometimes a little tough love is all we need.

8:52 into the first period of the Bruins 3-2 victory over the Buffalo Sabres Sunday night at TD Garden, Jake DeBrusk skated to the bench, finishing his fourth shift of the period.

The shift would also be the last of the period for DeBrusk who was benched by head coach Bruce Cassidy for the remainder of opening frame.

DeBrusk finished with just 2:22 of ice time in the first period.

“It’s a privilege to put on the Bruins sweater every night. And you might not have your A-game, but you’ve got to bring your B-game to help your team win and be a good pro,” said Cassidy.

“I didn’t think there was enough of that of late, wasn’t always necessarily tonight, but it kind of festered itself tonight. We delivered it, moved on, and you hope the player takes it to heart and doesn’t take it personal. There’s a few other guys that got that same message later in the game. See where it goes.”

During his tenure as head coach of the Bruins, Cassidy hasn’t been shy to send players messages when he feels the need to.

But how those players respond to those messages is more important than the message itself.

It was the perfect response from DeBrusk who bounced back with a pair of second period power play strikes 18 seconds apart.

The second serving as the game-winning goal.

"Obviously lots of emotions going on. I obviously care and have pride in myself,” DeBrusk said of the benching. “It's one of those things that you never want to have happen as a player, but usually I respond pretty well so it was nice to get the two goals. It's my job on this team to score goals."

DeBrusk responded and the Bruins picked up their third win in a row. Cassidy was pleased with DeBrusk’s response and even more so, the fact that DeBrusk and others are listening.

“Two goals is a good response. Go to the net, shoot the puck, get in the shooting lane when you need to, take a hit to get a puck out. There’s details of the game that we expect and it’s a little bit about some of the message with some of these guys now that are in that,” said Cassidy.

“It means when they stop responding, I’m probably out the door. That’s probably what happens with a lot of coaches; I’ll be perfectly honest with you. You have to find a different way to send your message. Right now, they have responded.”

DeBrusk wasn’t entirely sure what he did to cause the benching, but assumed it was his failure to block a shot in the defensive zone that twisted Cassidy’s arm.

Cassidy’s quotes after the Bruins shootout loss to the Islanders earlier in December does line up with DeBrusk’s assumption.

"The first one is a goal we’ve given up too much lately. In Florida, from 58 feet, the other night against L.A., again tonight. Some of that isn’t the goalie working to find the puck, some of it’s boxing out, some of it’s on our forwards to get in the damn shooting lane," Cassiday said back on December 19th. "Haven’t had as many blocks in those key areas — again, urgency to keep it out of your net."

Being benched is never the ideal situation for any player in the National Hockey League, especially a younger guy like DeBrusk.

But a response like his could go a long way for DeBrusk who is now up to 11 goals on the year.

“You’d rather it just be all roses, but this is the toughest league in the world and sometimes things happen. You make mistakes and you’ve just got to do whatever you can to respond,” added DeBrusk. “It’s not easy to do that, you can go the other way very easily. Like I said, I care and I obviously want to be here and playing hockey. I feel like the team is better when I’m playing good.”

For the Bruins sake, hopefully DeBrusk continues to respond to Cassidy's message.

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