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For the most part, the NHL is enjoying an extended period of peace, one that is likely to continue until fighting is eliminated.

Cedric Paquette, last seen clobbering Rick Nash out of uniform, can enjoy a free skate without the invitation that would have been sure to come in previous seasons. Nikita Kucherov can slash and cross-check and carve up opponents without fear of picking his teeth out of an opponent’s glove.

But there are occasional games in which tempers flare, punches fly, and temperatures rise.

They are glorious.

In the second period of the Bruins’ 4-2 win over Tampa Bay on Thursday, Cory Conacher swallowed chunks of Tuukka Rask’s blocker and glove. In the third, after Dan Girardi dumped Patrice Bergeron with a heavy but whistle-clean hit in the neutral zone, David Pastrnak decided it was a good opportunity to chuck knuckles for the first time in 248 career NHL games.

Both actions did not go unnoticed on the Bruins’ bench.

“Probably a clean hit. But you can’t have your better players being taken advantage of like that,’’ said David Backes, more accustomed to tuning up opponents than Pastrnak. “Kudos to Pasta for stepping up and fighting a bigger guy who’s probably more used to having his gloves off. That’s one heck of a job by a 21-year-old kid that’s really starting to grow and really starting to have an all-around game. Can’t say enough about those actions. The rest of the game too, there were plenty of willing combatants stepping up for each other and sticking together. When the team sticks together like that, it feels like there’s eight guys on the ice instead of just five. That’s a good feeling to have in this room.’’

Everybody understands the league’s wariness and weariness of fighting. It is not safe. Fists to the face do not lead to good health.

The fearsomeness of fighting, however, is enmeshed with the brutality of the sport. Nothing about hockey is safe, from the velocity at which large men travel to the force with which they drive shoulders into flesh. The last time the Bruins played the Lightning, Backes ended up on the wrong end of a Yanni Gourde skate slash that opened up a crevasse in his right leg that required 17 stitches to close.

This is a dangerous sport played by large, athletic, and competitive men.

But it is one in which the act of fighting brings its combatants together like few actions do. For most of the first period and half of the second, Rask believed the Lightning were crashing the net and taking his defensemen along for the ride. Finally, when Conacher barreled into the crease with Brandon Carlo as his sidecar, Rask blew his top.

“The first period, somebody fell on my knee there,’’ Rask said. “There was actually a penalty called. Then that one, it felt to me that our own D’s weren’t jumping on me. It felt like a push or something. So I just had to let them know I’m there. It happened twice.’’

With a flash of Tim Thomas’s rage, Rask closed on Conacher and introduced him to his equipment. Carlo completed the scuffle by taking Conacher down to the ice.

By the time Andrei Vasilevskiy crossed the red line and approached the melee, Rask had calmed down. The officials, anyway, intervened to deny observers the pleasure of a puckstopper punch-up.

“It gets guys going,’’ said Torey Krug. “Especially some guys that sometimes don’t have a pulse on the bench, it gets them engaged in the game. All of a sudden, you’re standing on the bench wondering what’s going on. You see one of your superstar players getting going on the ice, someone you think you never see. But that’s fun. He stood up for himself. Obviously guys will jump in if they have to. It was fun.’’

Rask kept his stuff on. Pastrnak did not.

Pastrnak does his best work with his gloves firmly glued to his hands. He hammered home a power-play goal in the first off Ryan McDonagh’s stick. In the third, Pastrnak capped his Gordie Howe hat trick by getting the secondary helper on Brad Marchand’s empty-net goal.

The kid who used to hear footsteps and tumble after the slightest of checks has matured into a puck-pursuit maniac, the perfect complement to Marchand and Bergeron.

In that way, Pastrnak was the unlikeliest of Bruins to whack Girardi from behind, whirl to confront the Tampa defenseman, and issue the challenge. He has never fought. Girardi is a big man that Pastrnak dropped two years ago with an illegal hit to the head that cost him two games.

But Bergeron is the Bruins’ golden child. They do not like seeing their best player absorb any wallops. So Pastrnak engaged.

“It was perfect timing,’’ Pastrnak said of the fight. “Tight game. Playing for first place in the division. I think it was perfect timing.’’

The fight did not last long. Its brevity did not dampen his teammates’ admiration.

They clapped their sticks as Pastrnak retreated to the penalty box. The taps resumed when Pastrnak was released following his five-minute banishment. Bergeron grabbed Pastrnak’s head and gave him a hug.

“That’s our team right there in a nutshell. That’s our team,’’ coach Bruce Cassidy said. “We stick together. We’ve done that all year no matter who’s in the lineup.

“We trust our players to go out there, do the job, and have each other’s backs. That’s what makes it a special group.’’

Fluto Shinzawa can be reached at fshinzawa@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeFluto.