It didn't take long for the playoff rematch between the Boston Bruins and Florida Panthers to get downright spicy.

You knew this was going to come, too. The Bruins remember last year. The sting is still there for every player who experienced that series. And after all four head-to-heads between the teams during the regular season featured more noise than most. Oh, and the Panthers got their doors blown off in Game 1, so expecting a spirited push back Boston's way registered somewhere between 99 to 99.9 percent on the probability scale.

And it indeed came in Wednesday's Game 2, with the Panthers burying the Bruins for six goals before everything blew up, with misconducts galore, and a brawl-filled night headlined by a fight between the Bruins' David Pastrnak and Florida's Matthew Tkachuk.

PASTRNAK AND TKACHUK DROP THE GLOVES! 🥊 pic.twitter.com/RQqDxyOO2F

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 9, 2024

It was not a fight that’s going to make a Halftime Pizza highlight reel some 20 years from now, but Pastrnak’s willingness to go, especially as a non-fighter, was not lost on his team.

“It’s gonna be a series, and what I’m really proud of? I’m proud of Pasta,” Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery said following the series-tying loss at Sunrise’s Amerant Bank Arena. “Because there’s so many guys out there pushing after whistle and the linesman are there [but] Pasta and Tkachuk, they just went out there and fought. That’s what you like. You like your hockey players to be competitors.”

“I mean, you don’t see that often,” B’s captain Brad Marchand offered. “It’s great for him to step up. I mean, you know, he doesn’t fight often. He’s actually pretty tough.”

It was also a fight that Pastrnak, who came into tonight’s game with just one career fight (a Mar. 2018 scrap against Dan Girardi), didn’t seem to run from, with Pastrnak appearing to agree to a scrap with Tkachuk before the two hit the ice after a run-in on their previous shift.

Pasta and Tkachuk agreed to fight before going at it the next shift! 🤯 pic.twitter.com/HOVK6Spfpi

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 9, 2024

“He was asking me,” Pastrnak confirmed. “So I felt like, I’d step up.”

Pastrnak also expressed that he was willing to ‘step up’ for his team because at that point the game was over, and it was about message-sending more than anything else at that point in the night. Pastrnak also made it clear that he didn’t have any sort of reservations about taking on a customer like Tkachuk.

“Well, I mean, you are in the game [and] it’s a lot of emotions,” Pastrnak said of taking on Tkachuk (24 fights in his NHL career). “I’m not afraid of him, to be honest. I can take a punch. And I'd do anything for these guys here."

If there was one thing the Bruins had a problem with, however, it was Tkachuk throwing extra punches at Pastrnak after Pastrnak had fallen down, which is typically frowned upon when it comes to “The Code.”

Pastrnak opted not to comment on that part of it, and Montgomery made his feelings on the matter known without saying enough to get himself in any potential trouble with the league.

“It’s not part of the game, for me,” Montgomery said of Tkachuk’s extra shots. “But I’m not going to comment on players on other teams. I just worry about my own players.”

Panthers head coach Paul Maurice, meanwhile, called the Pastrnak-Tkachuk “awesome,” and added that he believes that the brewing Bruins-Panthers rivalry is great for the NHL.

Swayman gets early hook

Boston’s Game 2 blowout loss in Sunrise was not about Jeremy Swayman.

Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery seemingly wanted to make that clear before Swayman even made it down the tunnel and back to the B’s locker room, too.

Jim Montgomery makes a point of going over and talking to Jeremy Swayman after pulling him: pic.twitter.com/xEjyc1tgh4

— Evan Marinofsky (@EvanMarinofsky) May 9, 2024

Given almost no support in front of him in any fashion, the Bruins made what felt like a mercy pull of their breakout goaltender early in the third period and when this game officially seemed out of reach for the Bruins, who at that point were facing a three-goal deficit behind enemy lines.

“Swayman was terrific,” Montgomery said following his team’s 6-1 loss to the Panthers. “I thought about taking him out at 3-1 going into the third. And then when the fourth goal went in, I was like, ‘I’m taking him out now.’ He two great saves before [the fourth goal] went in.”

Montgomery went on to note that this game was about the B’s lack of jump, not Swayman or his intensifying workload, with Game 2 marking Swayman’s seventh straight start (and over a 15-day span).

“The workload hasn’t played into Jeremy Swayman, [but] the workload had played into our effort tonight,” Montgomery said. “We didn’t have juice tonight.”

The move didn’t ruffle any feathers with the 25-year-old Swayman, who got to get some ‘rest’ in, even with his ‘body feeling great’ eight games into his first real run as Boston’s playoff ace.

“I trust that guy with my life,” Swayman said of Montgomery. “He’s gonna make decisions that are going to help the team. And all I can say is I can’t wait for Friday.”

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