The visitors’ dressing room at TD Garden is a far cry from the home dressing room. There is little in the way of ornamentation, just white walls and bare locker stalls occupied by a different player for each game.
Shawn Thornton has never set foot in that room, at least not as an opposing player coming to face the Bruins. He will on Tuesday, in a return to Boston that marks the first time he’ll play in the city he called home for seven years before leaving the Bruins.
“I’m excited,” Thornton said by phone Saturday from Florida, before the Panthers won their fourth game of the season. “I’m really excited, actually. It’ll be good to come back.
“It’ll be weird. I’ve never dressed on the other side before. The first game I ever played in the Garden was with the B’s, so it’ll be definitely a little bit weird. But I’m excited. It’ll be good to be back in there.”
For Thornton, Boston is not just any city, any former stop in a lengthy NHL career. This is his once and future home, with the enforcer intending to live in Boston after his playing days are done, likely after his current two-year, $2.4 million contract with the Panthers is up. His parents, in fact, are flying in for the occasion.
Of course, he would have liked to have continued playing for the Bruins, but the team understood that the league is moving away from fighting, evidenced by the number of fighters who did not receive offers this summer.
But the Bruins feel the void left by their longtime teammate.
“Obviously everyone looks at on-ice stats, but I remember a day where it used to be a lot about character as well,” said Thornton’s former linemate, Daniel Paille. “It goes a long way with having character in the locker room. Shawn brings that, without a doubt.
“He has that impact, intimidation factor — game in, game out. He’s definitely vocal in trying to pump up guys when you’re sitting on the bench. When he’s on the ice, you know he’s giving everything he has, skating and hitting and doing anything he can to get a win for us.
“I think we all know what he’s capable of, definitely miss that aspect of his game.”
Florida, a team with some young talent, recognized those attributes. General manager Dale Tallon gave Thornton the biggest payday of his career.
“I honestly think we have a sneaky good team,” Thornton said. “I think a lot of people underrate us. We have really solid D, we’ve got really good goaltending, and we’ve got four pretty good lines when we’re all going.
“I like this team. I mean, people probably say that I have to say that, but I truly believe that we have a sleeper team here.”
What has been different for Thornton has been playing in an arena that for most games is half-full at best. TD Garden is bursting on game days. The BB&T Center, well, isn’t.
“From playing so long in the minors, when I’m out there I don’t notice it,” Thornton said. “In warm-ups it’s a little different when you’re skating around and there’s only a few hundred people in the building, then it gets up to a few thousand for the game.
“But during the game when you’re on the ice, I can kind of block it out. I think it’s from playing in, whatever, Lowell on a Sunday afternoon and there’s 12 people in the building.
“That being said, I’d love for the place to have 20,000 people in it and be rocking, but as far as during games I can block it out anyway.
“It doesn’t really matter. But we want fans. That’s kind of South Florida sports. If you start winning and putting a good product out there, people will start showing up. So that’s on us.”
He saw how a good team affected the fans in Boston, who didn’t quite show up in the same numbers his first season. He saw how people took to the players — including him — when they became a version of the Bruins that would go on to win the Stanley Cup and make the playoffs year after year after year.
“It was an amazing run,” Thornton said. “I think that the way people supported me, my foundation, all that stuff . . . for a fourth-line winger to have that many people take to me that kindly, I think, is kind of how the city is built. They appreciate hard-working, blue-collar guys.
“It was a great spot. I couldn’t have picked a better spot for those seven years, that’s for sure.”
Thornton understands — and knows from experience — that the weirdness of being back in Boston will go away once he hits the ice. He’s played against friends before. He’s fought friends before. That’s not really something he’s worried about.
“I never go into games thinking about fighting anyway,” he said. “It’s in the back of my mind.”
Nor has he been doing it much in South Florida. Thornton has just one fight on his card this season, having taken on Bryce Salvador Oct. 11, according to hockeyfights.com, though he did fight twice in one game in the preseason.
That might be partly by chance. But it also might be because enforcers are a suddenly dying breed.
“I was told when I got here that it wasn’t my first job, anyway,” Thornton said. “It was to go out and play and then if things needed to be taken care of, they needed to be taken care of. But obviously — it’s been well-documented by the non-fighting pundits — there’s not as many guys in the league that do it. They’re still out of work.
“But it depends on the team. And they come in bunches. It’s too early to tell. There’s some years where I fought five or six games in a row, then I’d go three, four weeks without fighting because it just wasn’t necessary. It really comes in waves sometimes, so it’s a little too early to tell.”
So while he’s not thinking about fighting an ex-teammate, Thornton is thinking about making his mark in another way.
“I just want to score on Tuukka [Rask],” Thornton said. “I want the game-winner: 3-2, game-winner.”
Amalie Benjamin can be reached at abenjamin@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @amaliebenjamin.