Bruins forward Jakub Lauko felt like he was back to his old self in Boston’s 4-3 overtime loss to the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday night at TD Garden.
That meant bringing a physical presence to Boston’s fourth line, including a willingness to drop the gloves.
Lauko, who suffered a scary injury earlier in the season when a skate blade cut him near his eye, was back to playing with a near-reckless abandon that suits him well. He got in a first-period fight for good measure, too, exchanging fists with Wild forward Connor Dewar.
“It’s the first week that I kind of got the green light to fight,” Lauko told reporters, per team-provided video. “So, I went into this game, like first time that I could actually do my thing and play my game. Obviously, when you can fight, you can just go around and run around, trying to hit everyone. This was the first game that I could play the way I wanted to.”
Lauko ditching any tentativeness and flying all over the ice to make hustle plays certainly caught the attention of Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery. And even though the 23-year-old didn’t produce any points, Montgomery saw it as Lauko’s best performance of the season.
“I do think it was his best game just because of his intensity on pucks,” Montgomery told reporters, per team-provided video. “He was physical. I think he had at least three big hits that I remember.”
Lauko picked a good time for his first fight of the season. It came right after Marcus Johansson gave the Wild a 1-0 lead near the midway point of the first period.
It was the shot of energy the Bruins needed — they scored less than five minutes later — and it was something Lauko really gave Boston all game.
“It was great,” Montgomery said of Lauko’s fight. “It got us into it and I thought we picked up our intensity after that. They’d just scored and I thought we were a little flat, so he picked us up.”
