With Sean Kuraly, David Pastrnak, David Krejci, Craig Smith and Jake DeBrusk still on the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol list, general manager Don Sweeney hopes the remaining healthy players can get back on the ice Wednesday, ahead of Thursday’s contest with the New York Islanders.
“Testing protocols will determine if we get back at full capacity, or what capacity we get to either Wednesday or Thursday,… Sweeney said. “Really most of the time, it revolves around testing and the league has done a fabulous job of trying to add secondary layers of point-of-care on game days and such, and even in our case on game days or on other teams’ cases.…
We haven’t seen the Bruins since Thursday’s 4-1 victory over the Buffalo Sabres. On Friday, the league announced the addition of four Bruins players to the COVID-19 protocol list, postponing Saturday’s rematch with the Sabres, and Tuesday’s game with the Islanders.
With two more games added to the back end of their schedule, the Bruins will conclude their season with 28 games in 45 days.
“The league has its challenges, they know what games they can place and move around. Again, they've done an unbelievable job of trying to fit the jigsaw pieces together,… said Sweeney. They’ll (the league) make the games up where they can, if that means to add at the end, they’ll have to look to do that to fit in as many games as they can with the goal to clearly play all 56 games.…
Should the Bruins be allowed to return to the facility Wednesday or Thursday, and are able to host the Islanders, it’s still too early to tell if any of the five Bruins on the protocol list will be able to play.
While that’s a tough pill for Sweeney and the Bruins to swallow, it’s a similar situation they saw the Philadelphia Flyers in last month when the two met at Lake Tahoe.
“Subsequent testing here over the next couple of days may determine who’s available to us. We do believe that we’ll have a couple of players that will be unavailable, and then the rest of the test results will determine who is available to participate on Thursday night if we’re able to do so,… said Sweeney.
For the players that were placed on the protocol list, they were separated from the team and all individually sent back to Boston via a private car service. The rest of the group was able to safely return to Boston on the team plane as they normally would have.
While the Bruins were on the road in Pittsburgh and in Buffalo, the injured players they had back home in Boston were able to skate, and because of how long they’ve been away from the team for, have been able to skate at the team’s practice facility while the rest of the team remains in quarantine.
Brandon Carlo was one of those players who has been able to skate at Warrior Ice Arena.
“There was a scheduled day off for all players, including injured players. And obviously the quarantined players have not been anywhere near the facility other than to test. But the other players have had access to the ice,… said Sweeney.
“If you were on IR, if you were part of the injured party here at Warrior while we were on the road, then you were not subject to the same quarantine requirements that the rest of us are all required to uphold to.…
The Bruins were scheduled to welcome fans back to TD Garden Tuesday night, their first game in front of the home fans since Mar. 7, 2020. Despite the COVID-19 issues surrounding the Bruins, should Thursday’s game be played at scheduled, TD Garden will still welcome fans back, holding to 12% capacity.
“The plan is to move forward with the twelve percent at the Garden and all the people there under Amy [Latimer] and Cam [Neely] and everybody has done an unbelievable job to prepare the building to thankfully welcome back the people that want to support our hockey club and the first responders and health care workers we want to be able to acknowledge,… said Sweeney.
“Just to have people back in the building and cheering for us is going to be a welcome thing for the players and really for everybody involved.…