Neither the Bruins nor the Maple Leafs entered TD Garden Saturday with a roster full of heavy hitters or an enforcer like John Scott who is only there to police play on the ice and protect the teams star players.

A lot has been made of late about the Bruins lack of toughness and lack of a guy that other teams are fearful of. A guy that some think just because he’s on the roster, is going to keep big hits away from the David Pastrnaks, Patice Bergerons and Brad Marchands of the world.

That’s not how it works, and that’s not how it worked on Saturday.

From the drop of the puck the Bruins were engaged. They brought a much more physical game to the table. It’s almost as if they’ve heard and read the chatter that they’re not a tough, physical group.

Thanks to Saturday’s three-fight performance, the Bruins now lead the league with 12 fighting majors. Not bad for a team that no longer has Shawn Thornton, Milan Lucic or even Adam McQuaid.

Making sure to put as many bodies on Auston Matthews and John Tavares as they could, the Bruins were doing exactly what teams have been doing to them all year. Especially of late without Zdeno Chara and Kevan Miller in the lineup.

The Bruins were not the only ones throwing around more bodies than usual inside TD Garden on Saturday. The Maple Leafs matched the Bruins physicality, some clean, some unnecessary.

Several seconds after playing the puck behind the Bruins net, a late Zach Hyman came in with a massive hit on an unsuspecting Charlie McAvoy. Saturday was McAvoy’s second game back
after missing the previous 20 with a concussion.

Zach Hyman with a late hit on Charlie McAvoy. pic.twitter.com/ogkrorYAi0

— Marina Molnar (@mkmolnar) December 9, 2018

“I thought it was late. I thought it was unnecessary. If the league takes a look at it – I don’t know if they will or not, usually they do if there’s a major involved. But again, it’s one of those things where you’re at a point in the game, hasn’t been a lot of body checking from the other team and all of a sudden there’s a late unsuspecting one, and it annoys you,” said Cassidy. “Especially when it’s Charlie who just came back, so you’re wondering are they targeting him or not? You don’t know that. I’d like to think it was just a guy playing hard and got there late and didn’t pull up, but our guys responded well.”

After the hit, McAvoy was pulled from the game via the NHL’s concussion spotter. Once passing the league’s mandated concussion test, McAvoy returned to the Bruins bench, but did not take another shift for the remainder of the game.

McAvoy was seen after the game in good spirts as he left TD Garden. Cassidy was asked if he would consider holding McAvoy out of Sunday’s contest in Ottawa against the Senators. A decision on that is up to McAvoy he said.

“He’ll wake up and determine how he’s feeling. I think we were going to do that after the Tampa game anyway to make sure everything’s good,” said Cassidy. “Hopefully he wakes up feeling great and knows well, hey, I’m kind of back to myself. That would be best case scenario for us.”

Coincidently enough, before Saturday’s contest Cassidy and the Bruins talked as a team about how to respond to things like this. In this instance, it was Matt Grzelcyk providing the response for the Bruins, dropping the gloves with Hyman.

“I actually didn’t see it at the time. Just saw it after the game, so it’s obviously something you don’t like to see especially when you kind of have a lead like that,” said Grzelcyk. “So, just trying to stick up for my teammate there.”

Hyman was assessed five minutes for inference, five minutes for fighting and a game misconduct. Grzelcyk was given five for cross checking, five for fighting and two game misconducts. One of the misconducts being from Grzelcyk’s shirt not being properly strapped down.

The hit on McAvoy wasn’t the only big hit to come in the third period of what ended up as a 6-3 Bruins win. Chris Wagner’s open ice hit on Morgan Rielly sparked a bought between Wagner and Ron Hainsey. Even though they talked about being more physical with the skilled players of Toronto, Wagner’s hit had nothing to do with that. It was a matter of Rielly being the guy in open ice with the puck on his stick.

“He was the one with the puck, so can’t really cheap shot someone. I thought it was a pretty clean hit for the most part, stayed on my feet. When something like that happens to Charlie you want to respond in the correct way,” said Wagner.

The teams finished with a combined 45 hits, 24 coming from the Bruins. Sean Kuraly led the team with four.

You can question the Bruins toughness, or lack of, until your blue in the face. But, at the end of the day, regardless of who is on the ice, they’re going to stick up for each other.

“It just seems like every time one of those hits happen it’s our smallest guy that’s the closest guy in the vicinity, but they always go and show up, so you have to give them credit for that,” said Cassidy. “I think the response from those hits come, and we’ve talked to our team about that.”

Or as Brad Marchand put it, the Bruins are a family.

“We’re a family here and we stick up for one another,” said Marchand.

“Grizzy [Grzelcyk] did a great job jumping in there and Wags [Wagner] did a phenomenal job stepping up and following up the next shift, so it could have gone a lot worse out there than it was.”

The Bruins needed two points Saturday night. They got their two points, and they got to take some frustration out.

Can they build from it? We will see.

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