Let's start with the good news, shall we?
For the first time in close to a week, the Bruins returned to the ice for a team practice — with Wednesday's 7 p.m. skate at Warrior Ice Arena featuring the most complete listing of participants that we've seen in quite some time at the club's training facility.
David Pastrnak, David Krejci and Craig Smith — tabbed on the NHL's COVID-19 Protocol list since last Friday — saw their names expunged from the document on Wednesday evening, with the trio practicing without restrictions and cleared for Thursday's return to game action against the Islanders.
A pair of skaters that were injured on Boston's abbreviated, COVID-impacted road trip in Trent Frederic (felled after blocking a shot last Thursday against Buffalo) and Jarred Tinordi (who violently slammed into the boards on March 16 vs. Pittsburgh) were also back on the ice in regular practice sweaters — giving Boston both depth and size on its fourth line and D corps.
Another member of that traveling party in Tuukka Rask — held out since March 7 due to an undisclosed injury — also practiced in full, while three skaters that remained in Boston to rehab injuries also returned to practice in Brandon Carlo (non-contact sweater), Jeremy Lauzon and Zach Senyshyn.
And even though both Carlo and Lauzon will not be cleared for Thursday's contest, just the sight of Carlo back on the ice — a little more than two weeks removed from being taken to the hospital after a cheap shot from Tom Wilson — is a victory in and of itself for a B's blue line that has been tremendously shorthanded for weeks now.
But even if Thursday's home tilt with the Islanders — featuring more regulars back in the lineup and a couple thousand fans back in the stands — might offer the first sliver of normalcy that Bruce Cassidy and his club have experienced this season, there's nothing normal about what awaits them in their unofficial second half of this 56-game campaign.
While Boston is often used to having a crowded calendar in the months leading up to playoff hockey, the complications brought upon by multiple postponements due to COVID-19 protocols — scrambling an already crammed league schedule that can't be pushed into late July (when the Tokyo Olympics are set to begin) — means that the Bruins are in line for a brutal gauntlet down the stretch, with 28 games penciled in over the span of just 45 days.
Fair to say, it's a taxing, sprint-to-the-finish kind of slate that even Cassidy — who was used to some uneven and cramped schedules during his tenure down in the AHL — has yet to experience, at least in the regular season.
"No, I've never had a schedule like this," Cassidy said. "Even in the minors, I don't think it's that intense. There's pockets of the year where you'll have maybe 10 games in 15 days. Again, in the minors, it's built around scheduling for availability — like Christmas holidays, right? Because people are looking for things to do. So they need to draw crowds at certain times of the year, but never this intense."
Even with a full complement of players (returning both from COVID-19 protocols and traditional IR), Boston can't simply expect to roll out the same lineup night in and night out for the next seven weeks — not with a workload like this. If there's one positive to draw from the previous month, it's that Cassidy and his staff have a stronger grasp of the club's overall depth chart, with both bench options like Connor Clifton / Tinordi and Providence call-ups like Senyshyn all more than holding their own when pressed into service.
That depth is going to come in handy over the coming months, because even if Boston manages to avoid the injury bug moving forward, limited minutes and potential scheduled nights off due to "load management" might have to be prescribed in order to keep key cogs like Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci and Tuukka Rask fresh ahead of a postseason push.
Of course, that's easier said than done for a Bruins team that's far from a lock when it comes to punching a ticket to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, with Boston still stuck in fourth place in the hyper-competitive East Division — with the slumping (but still talented) Flyers sitting just two points behind them.
"You got to use your whole roster, including your taxi squad," Cassidy said of how Boston can weather this grueling stretch. "We're fortunate, we've always used two goaltenders, so we're ahead of the curve there. We had to use a third (goalie), who played well, so that's good to know in the back of your mind. I think you have to limit minutes along the way in game. That's the toughest thing. You're trying to win hockey games and knowing that, 'Hey - you've got four games this week, are you going to run these guys in the ground tonight?', just to get the extra point or two and risk going forward?
"You're always risking injury with heavy minutes. But I think that can happen at any time. So I think as a coach, when you're into the heavy minutes, it's more about is there time to recover? When's the next game? So we won't have that luxury. So your fourth line or depth players down in the lineup become more valuable to you. Obviously we've used 12 D, so we've seen what that looks like and we've defended well. So that part of it, we know. So some of the injuries that happened are going to help us probably manage our lineup going forward. If we do have to mix guys off the taxi squad, into the roster, especially on the back end, because we've had a look at so many guys.
"So that's how I think you handle as a coach, — you just got to have a good feel for which games you want to tax your top-minute guys and that'll be the challenge for me and our staff and hopefully you get some games where you're playing well and you have those leads where you can use everybody and rest those guys, but again, we'll see if that happens for us."
Of course, Boston — and plenty of other NHL franchises — could get bailed out by the league if it opts to schedule some of these makeup games beyond the expected end of the regular season. The NHL might be operating on a very tight schedule, but given the amount of postponements that have hit the calendar (with the Canadiens now sidelined for the rest of the week due to COVID complications), the league may not have a choice when it comes to stretching out the regular-season slate over a longer period of time.
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That'd be a welcome development for Cassidy and the Bruins, but even if the current 28-in-45 gauntlet ultimately remains intact, Boston's bench boss is taking things in stride. At the very least, the Bruins are back in business, and looking forward to building more breathing room for themselves in the standings.
"I'm an optimist. We're back at work," Cassidy said. "We weren't sure on Monday, Tuesday — how this was gonna play out. Here we are. ... We didn't know how many (players) we'd lose. And the staff and everyone that was on the trip. It was a little bit of an unknown there for a few days. So the good part is we're back to work. Everyone's feeling good.
"I think as a team ... we're at the halfway point. ... We are, I think, a solid hockey team. I think we've had our share of injuries, the odds are they won't continue on the back end, we'll get healthy there. Knock on wood the other positions stay healthy. And we get a bit of a better feel for what our team really looks like. Is it the team at the start of the year that was playing pretty well and accumulating points? Or was it the team recently that's a little more inconsistent, but coming out of it, I thought, at the end there — starting to find our game better. So that's what we'll see. And hopefully it starts tomorrow with a good, solid effort."
Other Bruins Notes
While Frederic, Senyshyn, Tinordi and Rask will all take part in Thursday's morning skate and have a chance to play against the Islanders, the Bruins were still missing a couple of lineup regulars during Wednesday's practice. Krejci, Pastrnak and Smith might be off the COVID-19 Protocol list, but Sean Kuraly and Jake DeBrusk remain on it — with both wingers still not cleared to return to the ice yet.
"No one's happy. They're missing time. They're isolated," Cassidy said of DeBrusk and Kuraly. "I don't think there's any threats there, health-wise. They're young guys. They're healthy. So they just have to sort of do their time and make the best of it while they're off and be ready to go when they get back."
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