Ames: Bruins break out the sandpaper against the Canadiens

The Bruins haven't had to intimidate too many teams physically this season. Their offense, defense and goaltending has taken care of that for most of the year.

On Thursday against the Canadiens, the Bruins showed they still have some of the Big Bad Bruins of old in them.

Particularly in the first period, the B's got involved in scrums to stand up for teammates, but also to show that they won't get pushed around by anyone.

Brad Marchand set the precedent when he jumped Rem Pitlick for delivering a late hit on Patrice Bergeron.

"You don't hit our captain late, that was a three-second late hit," B's head coach Jim Montgomery said. "I loved the fact that Marchand made the guy pay a price for doing it."

Later, Charlie McAvoy checked a Montreal attacker away from Jeremy Swayman after he got a little too close to the Bruins netminder after a shot on goal.

McAvoy isn't one of those players looking to make a big hit every shift, but when the former Boston University Terrier lines someone up, the opposing player remembers who hit him.

On the other end of the spectrum, A.J. Greer earned the consequences of stepping over the line with a cross-check to Mike Hoffman's face before a faceoff.

Greer only played 2:13 of the game before hitting the showers early.

"We talk about playing with emotion which is great, but not getting emotional," Montgomery said. "Unfortunately for Greer, his stick rode up. It's something we can learn from. You can't take those kinds of penalties in the playoffs."

The game cooled off in the second and third periods, but by that point, the Canadiens were playing catchup and the Bruins are not a team that surrenders leads easily. The Bruins were assessed 23 of their 25 total penalty minutes in the first.

Emotions increase during the playoffs when more is on the line and the B's gave a glimpse of that style of play against their storied rivals.

"Two Original Six teams, anytime that [Bergeron] gets hit like that we're going to react," Jake DeBrusk said. "I actually didn't see what happened but you could just hear the crowd go, so I knew something was going on. There were a couple of good scrums, but obviously when these two teams matchup we always play each other hard."

And a quick note to other teams, if you're going to go after someone, Bergeron should be the last guy on that list.

"What I would point out is him sticking up for [Bergeron] is outstanding," David Pastrnak said. "It's been kind of our motto as a team and it's great to see when a guy like [Marchand] sticks up for our captain. It defintely gets everybody going on the bench."

"Everyone sticks up for each other in here," Tyler Bertuzzi said. 

The Bruins will likely have another emotional battle on their hands when the Lightning come to town on Saturday. Tampa Bay is struggling of late as it's lost three in a row, including a 7-2 defeat to the Senators on Thursday, but will surely get up for a game against the best in the business in Boston.