McQuaid posts a 7-1-1 record this season over at hockeyfights.com

Bruins defenseman Adam McQuaid has been no stranger to the fisticuffs this hockey season.

This afternoon during the Bruins 2-0 loss to the San Jose Sharks at the TD Garden, McQuaid dropped the mitts for this 10th time this season — second fight in consecutive games — against Sharks’ forward, Ben Eager.

“I try and play physical. Sometimes, with the physical game, sometimes you have to answer the bell,” McQuaid said about fighting in two straight games. “Sometimes you’ll go 10 games without a fight and sometimes it will be back-to-back games, it’s just how things unfold.”

McQuaid, who held on to his stick for the beginning stages of his fight today, logged a long shift and would have preferred to engage at another time.

“I’ve been out there for a while and wasn’t given much of a choice,” said McQuaid. “In a better situation things might have went better.”

Eager was assessed a two minute roughing call on top of the five-minute major for fighting.

No. 54 finished the game with a shot on goal and an Even rating in 18 shifts and 14:07 minutes of ice time — including 1:16 on the penalty-kill.

The 6-foot-4 blue-liner has had some big bouts in his young NHL career. Just this season he took on veteran Aaron Asham of the Pittsburgh Penguins in one heck of a fight. He then battled, and beat, last year’s NHL fight leader, Zenon Konopka of the New York Islanders. Over on hockeyfights.com, the viewers have the 24-year-old McQuaid with a 7-1-1 fighting record this 2010-11 NHL season.

With the game still at 1-0, McQuaid had No. 55 embedded in his brain. And in the third period, he issued a rematch to the former Blackhawk, but Eager quickly declined.

” I don’t know,” said McQuaid when asked about trying to engage once more. “I challenged him later on and he didn’t want anything to do with it, so just, move on,” McQuaid said.

Unfortunately for the Bruins and McQuaid, this is the one-and-only meeting between the two opposing Conference clubs. Maybe next year…or in the Stanley Cup Finals?

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