BRIGHTON, Mass. –There have been a few days where the Bruins organizational pride has probably taken some hits since they sent a third-round pick to the Philadelphia Flyers for the services of Zack Rinaldo two summers ago.
It wasn’t a popular move at the time for a player with a very limited skill set that consisted of hard, oft-times questionable, hits on the ice. It hasn’t played out favorably for the Black and Gold since that point.
Friday was another one of those days as Rinaldo was placed on waivers by the team and was missing from practice after being present for most training camp sessions dating to the last week of September.
Rinaldo, who still owes the NHL time yet served on a five-game suspension from last season, barely played for the B’s organization at the end of last season after delivering a nasty hit on Tampa Bay forward Cedric Paquette that earned his suspension. He then summarily got suspended for five games in the AHL for another head shot on an unsuspecting player.
GM Don Sweeney said at the beginning of training camp that the 26-year-old was battling some kind of injury over the first few days and Rinaldo never appeared in any of the first six preseason games for Boston prior to getting waived.
Claude Julien said there wouldn’t be any camp cuts on Friday related to the waivers, but it certainly looks as if Rinaldo is ticketed for Providence unless one of the other 29 teams steps forward to claim the NHL agitator with a pretty spotty reputation on the ice.
At this point, the Bruins would probably love for that to happen, but it would be shocking if any of the other teams scooped Rinaldo up.
Boston Bruins
“We are on a day-to-day basis with what we need to do here [with the roster]. There are also guys that would require waivers and all that stuff, so we need to make sure we’ve got everything covered before we start sending guys down,” said Julien.
Of course, other NHL teams won’t have to give up a third-round pick to get him on waivers, so that would already put them ahead of the game compared to the B’s head-scratching Rinaldo choice from a couple of years ago.