Shawn Thornton Returns to Boston, Insists Media Overreacting to Fighting

Shawn Thornton has known this moment has been coming, one way or another, since the day he sat in Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli’s office and was told the team wouldn’t be offering him a contract.

But now that the longtime Bruins enforcer is ready to make his return to the Garden Tuesday in a Florida Panthers’ uniform, it seems the 37-year-old is still wrestling with his emotions.

What’s he feeling about returning to the place where he made his NHL mark and won a Stanley Cup, a place he still plans to call home when his career is done?

“Yeah, that’s a hell of a question,” Thornton said with a laugh last week by phone. “It was a great seven years there. It is going to be different, that’s for sure. I’d never played in the Garden before I got there, so this will be my first time in the visitor’s dressing room, so that will be new. It’ll be interesting, but I’m just going to embrace it and enjoy it.”