OTTAWA – The words “injury-plagued” and “undermanned” come to mind with what’s going on with the Bruins headed into Game 2 of their playoff series vs. the Ottawa Senators on Saturday afternoon at the Canadian Tire Centre.
David Krejci was missing again from Bruins practice and is “unavailable” for Game 2 due to the upper body injury he’s nursing, according to coach Bruce Cassidy, and Colin Miller had to exit the practice midway through with the lower body injury suffered on the leg-on-leg hit from Mark Borowiecki in Boston’s Game 1 win on Wednesday night.
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So that means Ryan Spooner will again be the No. 2 center for the Bruins in Krejci’s absence and Joe Morrow looks like he’ll be drawing back in for the Black and Gold in place of Miller for his first NHL game since January.
“Krejci is unavailable tomorrow [for Game 2] and he’ll be day-to-day,” said Cassidy. “He wasn’t very good today. We were hoping he’d skate and it didn’t happen, so not playing for four days it would be difficult. He’s still day-to-day. We hope he’ll come around, but it’s not looking good for tomorrow.
“Colin Miller went out [to skate] and wasn’t feeling great, so he left the ice. He’s day-to-day as well, but we’re preparing to put Joe [Morrow] in there right now. Of course that could change in the morning [prior to Game 2].”
Boston Bruins
In other words, things might get a little bumpy on Saturday afternoon for a B’s team missing some key players against an Ottawa team looking to even out the series before things head to Boston and TD Garden next week. Here are the projected line combos and D-pairings for the Bruins M*A*S*H unit based on Friday’s practice:
Marchand-Bergeron-Pastrnak
Stafford-Spooner-Backes
Vatrano-Moore-Nash
Beleskey-Kuraly-Schaller
Chara-McAvoy
Liles-McQuaid
Morrow-K. Miller
Rask