Bruins injuries: Jake DeBrusk to miss 3rd straight game; Chara, Bergeron resume skating

After a disastrous trip down to Florida, the Bruins managed to right the ship over the weekend with a pair of wins against Toronto and Ottawa, and will now look to secure their third consecutive win on Tuesday against the Coyotes — a team that they have defeated in 13 straight contests dating back to Oct. 9, 2010.

But once again, the B’s will be without their second-leading goalscorer in Jake DeBrusk, who is set to miss his third straight game due to an upper-body injury.

DeBrusk’s injury could be traced back to the closing minutes of Boston’s 4-2 loss against the Leafs back on Nov. 26, with the young winger taking a puck to the back of his helmet off of a shot from Danton Heinen.

While he played in the next four games following the incident, DeBrusk did not tally any points and was a minus-6 during that stretch.

“He’s seeing some specialists this afternoon,” Bruce Cassidy said of DeBrusk. “Probably have a good idea coming out of that where he’s at. Clearly he’s not playing tonight. Day to day from there. If he gets diagnosed, he’ll go into that protocol and probably have a better timeline. As we’ve seen in the past, some of those come around quicker than others. Probably better not to speculate.”

If the cause of DeBrusk's ailment is indeed a concussion, it certainly wouldn’t be the first for the Bruins this season. Charlie McAvoy missed 20 games earlier this season due to concussion symptoms, while Urho Vaakanainen is still sidelined after suffering the same injury back on Oct. 23. David Backes also dealt with concussion symptoms that forced him to miss over two weeks of action earlier this year.

(Vaakanainen’s rehab has been further delayed due to a case of the flu. He still hasn’t joined the Bruins for a full practice since suffering his concussion.)

Is there anything that the Bruins can do to curtail the amount of concussions affecting the team? Cassidy believes Boston’s heavier style of play could contribute to it, but there’s a lot that goes into the cause of brain injuries, and how a team and the player address it.

“I don’t want to speak out of turn, but if the diagnosis right away is a concussion, then you’re into the protocol and you can’t get out of it,” Cassidy said. “So sometimes, for me, it’s almost like, can we just wait and see if it’s not just a headache or neck (injury) or something like that. And that’s from a coaching perspective. I don’t want to lose a player for that long, yet, I always believe in safety first. If the player feels that he’s not right, then you’ve got to trust his decision when he’s not right. ... There’s a lot more talk about it and a lot more that goes into it than just well, ‘I'm going to give it a go.’

“Are we more of physical team that competes to a certain level, and is that why we get more of them? I mean, you have to compare team to team and how style of play comes into it. Not a tidy answer, but I don’t have a great answer for why we get hit and inflicted a little more than the next team.”

Much like McAvoy, who noted that his recent injury was the first concussion that he’s suffered, DeBrusk’s delayed exit over a week after taking a puck to the back of the helmet could be due to the young forward not grasping the tangible symptoms that come from a serious head injury.

“So with Jake, it probably stung a little bit and maybe, I don’t know his history, maybe he never really had a concussion, so he thought, ‘Well, I’m supposed to be sore from taking a puck in the head,'" Cassidy said. "Maybe it snowballed from there and realized, this isn’t right.”

__________

While DeBrusk is still not back out on the ice, Cassidy had somewhat positive news for both Zdeno Chara and Patrice Bergeron, who have missed the last 12 and 11 games, respectively, due to injury.

While both Chara (MCL) and Bergeron (rib/clavicle) still don’t have established timetables for a return to game action, both players have resumed skating and are slowly making progress.

“I don’t know when the next update will come,” Cassidy said of Chara’s rehab. “What was it originally? Four weeks? Then if it’s four weeks tomorrow, then we have some work to do tomorrow getting updated, right? I kind of lost track of the exact timeline. It was a Wednesday in Colorado for him. Bergy was Friday in Dallas. Maybe there’s something to come there. I know they’re not skating with the team. So to say they’re close to playing, I don’t think it’s accurate either.”

Boston has been able to stay afloat without two key cogs in Chara and Bergeron, posting a 6-4-2 record since Chara exited a tilt against Colorado back on Nov. 14.

Still, given Boston’s scoring woes and taxing number of minutes dropped on the rest of Boston’s healthy blue liners, a return can’t come soon enough for No. 37 and No. 33.