The Bruins will have to wait a little longer before officially returning to game action.
In a league release, the NHL announced on Sunday night that three more games will be postponed on Tuesday and Wednesday due to COVID-related issues — including Boston’s road matchup against the Ottawa Senators on Wednesday.
The Bruins have now had six straight games postponed due to COVID-related issues:
12/18 @ Montreal
12/19 @ Ottawa
12/21 vs. Carolina
12/23 vs. Colorado
12/27 vs. Pittsburgh
12/29 @ Ottawa
Their next scheduled game is a Saturday matinee with the Sabres on New Years Day at TD Garden — representing a span of over two weeks between games.
The NHL originally planned for teams to resume game action starting on Monday after an accelerated leaguewide shutdown over the holiday break — but announced late on Christmas Eve that all games on Dec. 27 would be postponed, including that matchup against Pittsburgh.
Even though the Bruins returned to the ice on Sunday afternoon for the first time since Dec. 16, there was no guarantee that Wednesday’s game in Ottawa was going to get off the ground, especially with Charlie Coyle getting added to COVID protocols ahead of practice.
The Bruins — who have had 11 players placed in COVID protocol over the last two weeks — did manage to get seven of those players back on the ice Sunday in Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron, Craig Smith, Curtis Lazar, Trent Frederic, Anton Blidh and Jeremy Swayman.
However, even with more players getting cleared from their respective quarantines — or outright testing out of protocols — the Bruins were likely going to be rolling out another woefully short-staffed roster if Wednesday’s game in Ottawa preceded as planned.
Per COVID guidelines up in Canada, visitors can not gain entry to the country if they have tested positive for the virus within the last 14 days. So even though guys like Bergeron and others have been cleared from COVID protocols, it was not a guarantee that they would have received clearance to travel north of the border on Wednesday.
Bruce Cassidy noted on Sunday that the Bruins were operating with the assumption that Wednesday’s game would go on as planned — but also were putting contingencies in place if the contest was pushed back.
As such, the Bruins will now use this week as more of an extended ramp-up and reset after an up-and-down start to the 2021-22 campaign.
"If Ottawa gets canceled, we have a six-day window here to kind of have guys filtering in that we can use like training camp," Cassidy said. "If Ottawa doesn't [get postponed], then obviously we're going up there with part of our lineup and you lose a bit of that ability to work on back to basics every day for three or four days.
"You'd be obviously focusing on Ottawa as early as (Monday) because today was more about get your legs, move and get back on the ice, feel the puck.”