BOSTON — Bruins defenseman Matt Bartkowski hasn’t played since Nov. 2 and he’s played in just four of the team’s 16 games this season, but he’ll get his chance to get back in there on Monday afternoon.
That’s thanks to the fact that fellow D-man Adam McQuaid is out indefinitely with a lower-body injury he suffered in the team’s win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday night.
Bruins coach Claude Julien gave no concrete update on McQuaid other than to say he’s out indefinitely with the injury. Julien wasn’t sure whether it would be just a couple of days or more than a week, so he just labeled McQuaid as day-to-day.
Now Bartkowski has to show that he’s remained ready over the long layoff, which is something he said he’s tried to do over the last couple of weeks. It won’t be easy to just jump back into game action, though, especially with the high-powered Tampa Bay offense in town on Monday afternoon.
Tuukka Rask is expected to get the start for the Bruins in net.
Here are the rest of the projected lines for Monday’s game.
Bruins (10-5-1, 21 points)
Milan Lucic — David Krejci — Jarome Iginla
Brad Marchand — Patrice Bergeron — Loui Eriksson
Carl Soderberg — Chris Kelly — Reilly Smith
Daniel Paille — Gregory Campbell — Shawn Thornton
Zdeno Chara — Johnny Boychuk
Dennis Seidenberg — Dougie Hamilton
Torey Krug — Matt Bartkowski
Lightning (12-4-0, 24 points)
Alex Killorn — Steven Stamkos — Martin St. Louis
Brett Connolly — Valtteri Flippula — Teddy Purcell
Ondrej Palat — Tyler Johnson — Richard Panik
Ryan Malone — Nate Thompson — Mike Barberio
Matt Carle — Radko Gudas
Sami Salo — Victor Hedman
Andrej Sustr — Eric Brewer
