The Bruins are still waiting on pins and needles to see if their captain will be back in the fold for the 2022-23 season.
And to further complicate matters, the B’s are going to be without Patrice Bergeron’s first-line cohort — and the club’s offensive conduit — for at least the first few months of the new season.
The Bruins announced on Friday night that Brad Marchand underwent successful hip arthroscopy and labral repair on both hips earlier that day in a procedure conducted by Dr. Bryan Kelly at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City.
The recovery timeline for Marchand is approximately six months. Sticking to that timeframe, it means that Marchand will likely not be cleared for game action until late November.
Don Sweeney acknowledged during his end-of-season press conference that Marchand was weighing a potential hip procedure, although it was unclear if the B’s forward was going to opt for surgery this summer or next.
Marchand, who also dealt with a nagging AC joint injury down the final stretch of the regular season, clearly wasn’t himself in March and April — stuck in an 11-game goalless drought at one point.
Marchand, who led the Bruins with 80 points over 70 games this past year, is no stranger to major surgery — as the winger underwent sports hernia surgery back in 2020 to correct an issue that had been plaguing him for the last two seasons.
That being said, two hip surgeries for a 34-year-old player stands as quite the uphill climb. David Pastrnak underwent hip surgery back in 2020 and was sidelined for a little over five months — while a hip issue is what caused Nikita Kucherov to miss the entire 2020-21 campaign (although there were also cap-related implications at work there for Tampa).
Given Marchand’s work ethic, it wouldn’t come as much of a surprise if Marchand can still play at a high level upon finally getting back on the ice. But for the time being, the Bruins are going to have another major hole to fill in their forward corps — at least through September and October.
Marchand stands as the second B’s regular who already will not be cleared for the start of the regular season due to offseason surgery — as Matt Grzelcyk is expected to be sidelined to open the year following a procedure to repair a dislocated shoulder.