In his 14-year tenure with the Bruins, David Krejci has sparked the Bruins hundreds of times. With Krejci, usually the spark or change of momentum comes from a beautiful tape-to-tape pass or timely goal.

Thursday night Krejci was at it again, sparking the Bruins in a 4-3 victory over the Dallas Stars at TD Garden. But it wasn’t a goal, or even an assist that did the trick, it was Krejci’s fists and his third career National Hockey League fight.

“Yeah, that was big. The crowd was into that one,” forward Nick Ritchie said of Krejci’s fight with Joe Pavelski. “Definitely got a few good shots in and to see two established veterans, good players as well fight like that, it’s big for momentum.”

Shortly after Krejci’s fight, Brad Marchand broke a 1-1 tie and then Ritchie followed Marchand with his first goal as a Bruin. After Denis Gurianov brought the Stars within one, David Pastrnak’s league leading 46th goal of the season was the last the Bruins would need despite a late goal by the Stars with goalie Ben Bishop pulled for the extra attacker.

“I mean, get a couple old-timers like that going at it. I mean, everyone enjoys it. I don’t know much about Pavelski, but Krech [Krejci], I’ve seen him in a few over the years. He can hold his own,” said head coach Bruce Cassidy.

“He’s a good partner for him, looked like there were two willing guys going at it so that’s just some of that stuff that happens in hockey through the course of the game. It’s organic, nothing staged there. It certainly woke us up. Not that I felt we didn’t have it early on, but gave us a little extra juice. Let’s put it that way.”

It's not often you see Krejci lose his temper on the ice. But after several pushes, shoves and some extracurricular activity from Pavelski, Krejci decided to take matters into his own hands.

“I thought there were a few times where he kind of went a little too far. Even in the first period, I just kind of didn’t like it. It’s just one of those things,” Krejci said of Pavelski. “Happy he was willing to go and we settled it down right there and we move on. I have nothing personal against that guy. I like him as a player, but I thought a few times he went a little too far and I just didn’t like it.”

It was Krejci’s first official fight since dropping the gloves with Beniot Pouliot back in February of 2011.

After Krejci skated to the penalty box, bloody knuckles and all, each of the Bruins on the ice skated to Krejci to show their appreciation. That list included fellow alternate captain Patrice Bergeron and captain Zdeno Chara.

“That was, for us, obviously a key moment,” Chara said. “A guy like that who’s not known for dropping gloves had a great physical game. He stood up for himself and did a great job.”

To start the game Krejci was tasked with centering the two newest Bruins in Ritchie and Ondrej Kase. But between Anders Bjork's lengthy benching in the second period, and Chris Wagner leaving the game with an upper-body injury, the three did not get as much time together as they would have hoped for.

“Well, honestly, they got so scrambled up that — with [Bjork] it was a teaching moment. Like, if you want to play in April and May, this is what you’re going to see every night for hopefully two months,” Cassidy said.

“You’re going to have to get used to it, you’re going to have to start playing — not start playing, but you can’t go back. They had a shift in our end and going back with the puck if you survived it is, you can call it a rookie mistake, but at the end of the day, this has been talked about before about going back with pucks.”

It was a much better night than his debut Tuesday for Ritchie who followed up his first goal as a Bruin with the primary assist on Pastrnak’s third period tally. With Pastrnak streaking towards the net, Ritchie was able to find Pastrnak for an easy tap in.

It was a nice play by Ritchie who made it look like he and Pastrnak had been playing together for years and chemistry was high.

“He was calling for it and he had a head of speed too, so I figured he would be driving the back post and I put it over there and he was right there,” Ritchie said. “It was nice to score, nice to win. It was a good night tonight.”

It was an uneventful debut for Kase, but for a guy playing in his first game since February 7, that was expected. Within seconds of his first shift you could easily see the speed Kase has and how he uses his speed to be effective. He finished the night with two hits and two shots on goal in 15:16 of ice time. He was also used on the second power play unit, totaling 53 seconds of power play time.

“Ondrej looked like he hadn’t played in a while, was trying to find his groove there a little bit,” Cassidy said.

“A little bit rusty.”

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