BRIGHTON, Mass. -- A welcomed return for Patrice Bergeron is now in sight as the B’s best player returned to the Warrior Ice Arena practice sheet with his team on Wednesday morning, and jumped into his regular spot centering red-hot wingers Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak. Bergeron missed the entire three-game road trip for the Bruins with a lower body injury suffered in one of the final practice sessions prior to the start of the season.
The Bergeron return allowed David Backes to drop to the second line right wing with center David Krejci and Danton Heinen on the left side while Ryan Spooner was moved to the fourth line after a slow start to the season. It looked like both Czarnik and Spooner could be headed toward being scratched for Thursday night based on the line combinations in practice, but all of that is obviously predicated on No. 37 being good to go.
In other B’s health news, Adam McQuaid also made a return to practice after being out the last couple of weeks with an upper body injury. Here are the line combos and D-pairings from practice with the B’s preparing for their Thursday night home opener against the New Jersey Devils at TD Garden:
Marchand-Bergeron-Pastrnak
Heinen-Krejci-Backes
Beleskey-Nash/Czarnik-Hayes
Spooner/Moore-Schaller-Acciari
Boston Bruins
Chara-Carlo
Krug-O’Gara
Liles-C. Miller
Morrow-McQuaid
Rask
Khudobin