BRIGHTON, Mass. — The Bruins got on the ice on Monday morning for their first day of Phase 3 training camp and, as predicted by GM Don Sweeney, they were missing a couple of players. One of them happened to be the guy who led the league in goals this season.
David Pastrnak and Ondrej Kase were both missing from the Warrior Ice Arena practice facility on Monday while the two international players are presumably serving out their self-quarantine period after traveling back from their native Czech Republic.
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Sweeney said there would be a couple of international players missing from the practice group at the outset of training camp, but the expectation is that they’ll be in the fold within a day or two.
“With Kase and [Pastrnak] because of when they got here [to Boston], they have to have enough [negative COVID-19] tests,” said Cassidy, of the self-quarantine criteria that needs to be met before players that travelled internationally can join the Phase 3 practice group. “There are some guys going out in a later group because of the numbers. I would expect a few more will join us tomorrow and then we’ll go from there on a daily basis to see where they’re at.”
With Pastrnak and Kase both missing from the top-6, the Bruins had Karson Kuhlman and Anders Bjork taking their place on the top two lines, with an interesting looking third line of Nick Ritchie, Charlie Coyle and Sean Kuraly that could be a muscle-bound handful in the playoffs for opponents. It was also good to see all of the Bruins coaching staff was masked up while practice was going on, a practice one would expect to keep throughout the Return to Play process.
Bruins reserve players Urho Vaakanainen, Trent Frederic, Anton Blidh and Dan Vladar were also missing from the B’s practice ice this morning with three of the four presumably also serving out self-quarantine after coming back from Europe.
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Here are the line combos and D-pairings that took the ice for the first Bruins practice session on Monday with the group expected to fill out over this week:
FORWARD LINES
Brad Marchand | Patrice Bergeron | Karson Kuhlman |
Jake DeBrusk | David Krejci | Anders Bjork |
Nick Ritchie | Charlie Coyle | Sean Kuraly |
Joakim Nordstrom | Par Lindholm | Chris Wagner |
Paul Carey | Jack Studnicka | Zach Senyshyn |
DEFENSIVE PAIRINGS
Zdeno Chara | Charlie McAvoy |
Torey Krug | Brandon Carlo |
Matt Grzelcyk | Jeremy Lauzon |
John Moore | Connor Clifton |
Jakub Zboril |
GOALTENDERS
Tuukka Rask | Jaroslav Halak | Max Lagace |