Howard and Rask try to square up as all hell breaks loose in Boston.

Things turned ugly quick during the Saturday Night match up between the Detroit Red Wings and Boston Bruins. 

The Wings and Bruins were facing off at TD Garcens in Boston and with the game all tied up at 1 - 1 during the game's 2nd period things suddenly turned very physical and very nasty as a result of that physicality. The big exclamation point came with a little over 5 minutes left to go in the frame when Detroit Red Wings enforcer Luke Witkowski absolutely leveled Bruins veteran David Krejci at center ice.

The massive impact stopped Krejci dead in his tracks and elicited an audible gasp from the Bruins faithful in attendance. It was obvious that from the moment that Krejci got rocked that the Bruins were looking for some form of revenge. Unsurprisingly the Bruins were more than up to the challenge when it comes to getting nasty and it was none other than notorious National Hockey League agitator Brad Marchand who set the whole thing in motion.

Marchand got up and in the face of 23 year old Red Wings forward Tyler Bertuzzi but, perhaps to Marchand's surprise, he found that Bertuzzi was more than willing to engage with him and even drop the gloves with him. It appeared however that Marchand was more interested in goading Bertuzzi into a penalty and that was when out of nowhere goaltender Jimmy Howard somehow got involved. Howard came charging out of his net and was moving in the general direction of Bertuzzi and Marchand when Marchand delivered a chop to Howard's leg for good measure. That was more than enough to get a reaction out of the Red Wings' veteran netminder and he respond with a hefty hack of his own to the leg of Marchand and that's when all hell broke loose in Boston. 

Everyone jumped in on the melee with several Red Wings going after Marchand and several Bruins trying to peel them off one at a time. It was on the far end of the melee however that everyone's eyes were transfixed however as it looked like both Howard and Bruins goaltender Tuukka Rask were set to square off in the middle of the ice. Unfortunately for everyone excited at this prospect the NHL officials would not let them go, and we missed out on what likely would have been a classic moment.

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