Ryan: An incensed - and galvanized - Bruins roster exacted proper revenge against Capitals after Wilson's dangerous hit

Bruce Cassidy didn't have to say very much in the Bruins' locker room during the first intermission of Friday's game.

After all, what words of encouragement needed to be uttered to a group of men after what transpired on the TD Garden ice just moments prior.

All of the motivation, the drive, the hurt that they needed was served up in front of them whilst watching on the bench — with the optics of a beleaguered Brandon Carlo needing help off the ice seared into their collective conscious.

Carlo — now a five-year vet who noted just a few weeks prior that a temporary assignment as the club's alternate captain was the "biggest honor" of his life — couldn't even make it down the tunnel under his own power in the closing minutes of the first period.

The 24-year-old blueliner was felled by a dangerous, dirty check delivered to his head, causing him to crumple to the sheet as Jakub Vrana courageously added a cross-check for good measure to topple the 6-foot-5 defenseman.

Even those who didn't watch the hit in real time didn't need a degree in sleuthing to guess the culprit. It was Tom Wilson, of course — the infamous winger with an extensive rap sheet, headlined by a 20-game suspension levied against him back in 2018 off of, you guessed it, a dangerous check to the head of Oskar Sundqvist.



As Carlo hit the ice, the sounds of an incensed Bruins roster echoed through the cavernous Garden — with not a soul on hand in those 17,000+ seats to share in such outrage.

"F***ING BRUTAL!" 

"YOU'RE A F***ING SCUMBAG!"

If the Bruins weren't already heated enough, just wait until the refs got involved. Or rather, didn't get involved — as the punishment doled out to Wilson for sending a clearly concussed Carlo to the hospital was ... well, nothing. No penalty at all.

"We're upset. Brandon's a very popular guy in the room," Cassidy said. "And again, we felt that was completely unnecessary, dirty. ... defenseless player, predatory hit from a player that's done that before."

When you leave it up to the players to exact justice on the ice, things generally tend to go south in a hurry. Yet, such was the hand the NHL opted to play on Friday, with a riled-up B's roster ready to wage war on the Caps over the final two periods of play.

As Carlo was placed in an ambulance, the rest of his teammates stewed in their room — seeking the appropriate avenue to disperse a rage that had built up to a boil.

But rather than channel that fury into a motivational address, Cassidy deferred.

Rather, he let the players do the talking. And they didn't mince words.

"I have some things to say between periods," Cassidy said of his regular intermission addresses. "Mine's a little more how the game's going, how we correct things or if we didn't have the right energy. But this one I think the leadership group just took over and said that we're gonna finish every check, push back and go out and play hard hockey and win the game."

Had the Bruins wanted to, they could have turned a slim 1-0 lead after 20 minutes into a 40-minute goonfest — with brouhahas spilling at out at a rate not seen on Causeway Street since last call at Sullivan's Tap during the pre-COVID days.

But rather than retaliate against other members of the Capitals and devolve an already ugly affair into something even worse, the Bruins found the proper way to deliver their vengeance — scoring four unanswered goals coming out of the break, while also leaving plenty of welts against Wilson, in what was ultimately a 5-1 victory for Boston.

"It's out of our hands after that, we've just got to play hockey and try to stick together as a team, play the right way," Cassidy said. "Sometimes when that stuff happens, and there's no call — the players kind of settle it on the ice in their own way, and we felt that we pushed back and did what we could do and won the hockey game and tried to let that particular player know that that was unnecessary."

Whatever words Patrice Bergeron delivered in the room were backed up in the ice shortly thereafter, with the B's captain delivering a few stern remarks to Wilson during warmups. Bergeron left his fingerprints all over the drubbing that Boston delivered on Friday, scoring a goal and adding a helper while keeping his primary defensive assignment — Alex Ovechkin's line — off the scoreboard.

Bergeron stepped up to open the second, but the rest of his teammates soon followed.

"He's going to make sure that he sets the bar and people will follow Patrice — trust me, you've seen it, you've been here long enough," Cassidy said of Boston's captain. "He leads by example, has become I'm sure more vocal over the years ... his work ethic, says the right things and guys fall into place behind him and that's what happened tonight. Did it at both ends of the ice and did it on the score sheet and other guys took care of the physical stuff."

A player who's donned a black-and-gold sweater for 17 seasons might have set the tone, but it was a player skating in just his second game with Boston that provided arguably the biggest thump.

Wilson's comeuppance came in the form of 6-foot-6 defenseman Jarred Tinordi, who answered the bell minutes into the second period and traded heavy hooks with the imposing Capitals winger. Tinordi, given a new chance to continue his pro career in Boston after getting waived by Nashville a week ago, ingratiated himself to his new teammates — and Bruins fans watching on their TVs, phones and laptops — by being the first man into the breach.

The effort did not go unnoticed, with Bergeron tapping his stick against the B's sin bin after Tinordi was sent off after the scrap.

"I think that's what I noticed about this team as soon as I got here is that the boys are playing for each other, night in and night out," Tinordi said. "And I think how closes the group is, I'm not surprised to see the boys respond in a big way after one of our guys goes down like that. ... You can't have guys taking liberties with our players out there. I think that's the way I've always played, it's a way a lot of guys on the team play. You got to recognize that. I thought that was a little bit of a cheap shot and our guy goes down and we responded in a big way."

Tinordi's scrap not only delivered proper retribution against Wilson, but it sparked the rest of the skaters on the ice. As Wilson sat in the box, the Bruins started landing punches of their own against Caps goalie Vitek Vanecek — with three of Boston's four forward lines lighting the lamp (Trent Frederic, Bergeron, Brad Marchand and Nick Ritchie) in what was a straight shellacking for most of the remaining stretch of regulation.

Other faces stepped up to help hand Boston the decisive victory. A shorthanded D corps playing without one of their key cogs prevented much of anything from generating in front of Jaroslav Halak in net. Jack Studnicka and Boston's fourth line were forcing turnovers on the forecheck. Frederic, having already etched his name into the scoresheet, added another bout with Wilson for good measure. Even Jake DeBrusk, still fighting the puck in the O-zone, stepped into a point blast from John Carlson in garbage time to keep the score at 5-1.

The end result was two more points in the standings, albeit in a win marred by the uncertain status of Carlo.

The lopsided victory won't change what happened when Wilson lined up Carlo in his sights, but there's only so much the Bruins can control in these situations.

What they could control is how they'd respond after Carlo was knocked out of the contest, and they did that and then some — scoring, skating and scrapping as one unit until the final seconds drained from the Garden scoreboard.

"He's willing to stick up for his teammates," Marchand said of Tinordi. "And he showed that tonight and that was a turning point in the game. He stepped up and had a great fight, and we just rolled from there. ... Again, having guys that you trust in your room, that stick up for one another, it's been part of our culture for a long time. And that's not going to change. We expect that in this room and on our team and when it's your turn you got to step up. And he did a great job tonight doing that. Freddy again, later in the game. We got a lot of respect for guys like that."