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What play are you talking about this morning?
Sean Kuraly’s go-ahead goal? Maybe.
Connor Clifton’s ice-breaking one? Perhaps.
A snipe by Charlie McAvoy or an empty-netter by Brad Marchand? Sure, all of them were huge in helping the Bruins take the Stanley Cup opener over the Blues, 4-2, Monday night at TD Garden.
But did any of them fire you up the way Torey Krug did?
Flying down the ice, sweat-soaked hair flowing in the icy breeze, it was a helmetless Krug who most exemplified the Bruins’ night, one of the smallest guys on the ice delivering the biggest hit of the game.
There was Krug, hurling himself at Rob Thomas, leveling the St. Louis centerman with one supercharged blow. Intent on payback for a mugging in front of his own goal only moments earlier, a wrestling match with David Perron that resulted in Perron ripping Krug’s headgear off by its chinstrap, Krug turned himself into a human freight train. He made himself a Boston legend.
“Yeah, that was awesome,” teammate Marcus Johannsson said.
“That’s his courage,” Clifton would add. “You don’t want to mess with that guy. Don’t make that guy mad.”
Krug earned his anger. As soon as he escaped from Perron’s ridiculous clutches, he took off, swearing later he was only eyeing the puck at the other end of the ice, convinced he could support yet another offensive wave by the Bruins. But watch the replay of what happened next and you will be left with no doubt what Krug was thinking.
He was out for revenge.
Related: Gasper: When the Bruins finally found their legs, it was all over for the Blues
And, wow, did he get it, launching all 5 foot, 9 inches, and 185 pounds of himself at the body of Thomas, ignoring the three-inch height differential and 10-pound weight deficit that made him a definite underdog.
“Just battling with their guy in front, got up without a helmet and wasn’t too happy about it,” Krug said. “And just came down the ice and had a chance to make a hockey hit. And it turned out to be a good one. So it was big. Hopefully it gave the guys a boost on the bench, and the crowd obviously liked it. It’s just part of the game.”
Part of the game that helped change the game.
At the time it happened, with 10:19 left in the third period, the Bruins were well on their way to the victory, second-period goals from Clifton and McAvoy erasing the early two-goal hole they’d dug and one third-period one from Kuraly giving them the lead for good.
But what Krug did absolutely cemented the course of the night, sending the home crowd into an absolute frenzy, igniting social media with video replays, and immediate comparisons to Bobby Orr’s famous in-game flight against this same St. Louis franchise 49 years ago.
Related: Bruce Cassidy increasingly called on Sean Kuraly and the fourth line, and they delivered
One part courage and one part crazy, it was all parts heart, showing Krug’s willingness to be in the moment, to stand up for himself and his teammates, to channel the motivational fuel that has always fed his undersized frame. His personal history of concussions made it a particularly scary response, and one his pregnant wife — she’s due in late June — surely won’t want to consider given how many ways it could have gone wrong.
Bruins coaches and management probably don’t want to think about that either, but as Krug hit the ice himself, his head held up thankfully short of contact with the ground. Once play was stopped, he was able to skate to the bench unscathed.
The Blues were much more damaged.
“Obviously a great hit,” teammate David Pastrnak said. “This is the Stanley Cup final, it’s going to get physical, it’s awesome to see guys like Torey get physical. Both [courageous and crazy] pretty much, but obviously a bit more of courage. I know he has it. We all know it.”
He wouldn’t be here without it. Making the NHL at his size guarantees you play tougher than the rest.
“Every day you got something new on your plate,” Krug said. “You always have a target on your back and you always have to prove people wrong, even when you’re at the top of your game and you’re feeling like you are where you want to be. There’s always people that doubt you. It’s going to continue and you welcome that, try to embrace it, and use it as fuel.”
Perhaps that’s why head coach Bruce Cassidy made such a point last week of heaping some praise on Krug, calling him an “underappreciated” contributor to this Bruins playoff run.
“His ability to defend, to be honest,” Cassidy said, “you’re always going to get the power-play acumen from him. He’s going to make his breakout passes, he takes a lot of pride in taking the other side of the puck, a lot of pride. If you watch video, his boxing out of big guys every night, he’s committed to that. He’s not leaving the zone early, he’s making sure pucks are going out of the zone before he is, all of the little things that make a good defenseman.
“The commitment to stay in the battle, he’s got that.”
He showed it Monday, leaving one battle that he didn’t start and ending another that he did. Flying down the ice, hair flowing in a breeze of his own making, he is the image we will take from this game. Perhaps from this series.
“Well, he got a haircut a couple days ago, so he was looking pretty good,” Pastrnak said.
Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at tara.sullivan@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @Globe_Tara.