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The Boston Bruins knew a 12-game month of November would come with its share of challenges.
They expected those challenges to come with showdowns against the rival Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens (two of ‘em), St. Louis Blues, and Pittsburgh Penguins. Not with their ability to ice a full team on a nightly basis. But now, with five full-timers out of action, the Black and Gold are probably just hoping to survive the next couple of games (they have just two in the next six days) without another injury.
It’s been downright ugly for the Bruins. They’re without defensemen
Zdeno Chara (knee),
David Warsofsky (groin), and
Adam McQuaid (thumb). Up front,
David Krejci is still a question mark and has missed all but two of the club’s last nine contests.
Brad Marchand was officially placed on injured reserve on Saturday, and even
Chris Kelly’s reeling with some sort of an injury, as he was unable to play in the club’s 2-0 loss to Montreal on Saturday night.
From the point to the top line, the Bruins have been forced to mix it up on a near nightly basis. That’s a staunch change from what’s been considered the norm for a typically veteran-heavy B’s squad.
“I think it’s important for us as a coaching staff to, you know, really stay positive and upbeat. But having said that, I think our players are doing a really good job of that as well. I don’t see anybody discouraged – I think, you know, obviously disappointed, we haven’t beat [Montreal] yet this year and, you know, you wish the circumstances were better,” Boston coach
Claude Julien noted on Saturday. “We’re hopefully developing some players who are going to be better down the road because of what we’re going through. And that’s why you’ve got to stay positive, and that’s why you’ve got to stay with the program here. Our guys have got a great attitude – the guys that are playing – and that’s why they deserve a lot of credit.”
Among those developing, the Bruins have been forced to give big minutes to defenseman
Joe Morrow, wingers
Seth Griffith and
Matt Fraser, and most recently,
Alexander Khokhlachev and
Matt Lindblad.
“I think their learning curves have been pretty good. You know, like any young player, they have their ups and down, you know, better games than not,” Julien admitted on Saturday night. “You look at [Matt] Fraser who scores a big goal for us last night to tie the game up, and Griff [Seth Griffith] has got I think five goals right now. And you know, we’ve got some young players that are doing the best they can right now, and we’ve just got to keep working with these guys, and try to get through this plight of injuries.”
This isn’t the first time the B’s have battled through significant injuries during Julien’s tenure.
In 2007-08, the Bruins had moments where they were without Patrice Bergeron, Marc Savard, and countless others. That allowed players like David Krejci and Vladimir Sobotka to develop into legitimate NHL talents by way of real minutes. The 2009-10 Bruins were among Julien’s most injured squads, too, with Bergeron, Savard, Milan Lucic, and countless others missing time throughout the year with significant injuries.
“Those are one of the things that you have to go through sometimes throughout a season, dealing with injuries to key guys,” Lucic, one of five Bruins to play in every game this season, noted after last night’s 2-0 loss. “This is one of those years where it seems like the injury bug is going through the team and to top players on our team but we still have to find a way to play the way that we can and give it our all.”
By now, the Bruins know that this is part of life in the National Hockey League. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t become a psychological thing when you see teammates dropping like flies, either.
“Guys go down and miss some time. It’s almost like ‘Here we go again, another guy goes down’ but we can't focus on that,” Boston defender
Torey Krug admitted. “We just have to keep moving forward.
“With our roster right now it comes down to coaching and getting your guys prepared to play,” noted Krug. “Obviously through our system there’s a lot of guys ready to play in the NHL, so it comes down to management, coaching, doing a great job and it falls on us to perform.”
And here’s the thing-- the Bruins have not performed poorly, I don’t think.
They haven’t been the prettiest wins (not by a long shot), but they’ve won more than they’ve lost, and that’s something that gets buried when you look at
who they’re losing to. Since the injury wave began -- for simplicity’s sake, let’s start this with the Chara injury -- the Bruins have won nine of 13 games. Of those four losses, two have come against the rival Canadiens, one has come against the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the other to the Minnesota Wild. If three of those losses came against, say the Ottawa Senators or Nashville Predators, you’re not even talking about how this team has ‘struggled’. You’d instead be talking about how the B’s have responded well to their first taste of lineup adversity. Soft schedule or not, there’s something to be said about a team that can string wins together without their captain or top center.
It’s a simple concept for the B’s at this point: Survive. See what you can do, see if something clicks, and hope you get a healthy Chara, Krejci, or
anybody back sooner than later. Again, survive.
“We do have some new faces. We do have [to] sometimes establish some chemistry quick and find ways to play with one another and play well, and that’s a challenge in itself,” Bergeron said. “But also I think we need to definitely be at our best every time we step on the ice as a whole and as a five, six man unit with the goalie.”
It’s basically the Bruins’ only option, at this point. I’d be shocked if Chara (whose injury turns a month old today, by the way) is ready in the next week or two. Read as: Don’t hold your breath for a superhuman recovery. It sounds like Krejci’s injury is going to be a year-long issue, too. And there’s absolutely no word on what’s wrong with Marchand or Kelly (Julien wouldn’t comment on whether or not Kelly’s injury is a day-to-day thing). This is what the Bruins have. And it seems that they’ve realized that.
“We have the guys we have and we play with those guys because we know our system, we know whenever our guys get called up they know what they need to do and it’s as simple as that,”
Tuukka Rask said. “I don’t think we can start thinking about when this guy’s coming back, when this guy’s coming back because then we can lose our focus and our focus needs to be playing our hockey and grinding it out.
“Obviously everybody knows what’s going on,” said Rask. “We can’t start thinking about when these guys are coming back because then we’re going to lose our focus and I think [Julien]’s been really good at just focusing on the game on the ice and working with the guys that we have and making sure that we keep building our team in the right direction and building our game to the right direction.”
Given the uncertainty surrounding the Bruins both this year and beyond given the league’s cap situation, there’s a silver lining to be found in this whole mess. And that comes with the realization that the Black and Gold are getting a look at guys that are auditioning for jobs next year (Khokhlachev, Lindblad, Morrow, etc.) while also letting them develop in a high-pressure situation that forces them to log minutes they wouldn’t even come close to seeing if the B’s had a Krejci, Marchand, or Chara in their lineup. This situation is simply forcing the organization’s youth to become legitimate pros -- both on the ice and off the ice -- on the fly.
In front of their goaltending, which has (somehow) remained unharmed throughout this year, the Bruins have had 29 positional players skate in at least one game this season. That’s tied with Columbus, a team that’s already lost over 125 man games to injury this year, for the most in the NHL. But the B's, still just seven points out of first place, aren't looking at that in a negative light.
“At the end of the day we’re all here for a reason,” Fraser, a player that’s skated on all four lines at different points this year, said. “We’re all here [because] the Bruins think that we can bring something to the table, and no matter who pulls that jersey on, on any given night we expect to win and we expect to play hard.”
That’s a message that’s getting through to all 31 players that have donned the Spoked-B this year, too.
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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