BOSTON — Bruins defenseman Johnny Boychuk appeared to avoid a major scare Saturday afternoon against the Carolina Hurricanes. He did not come away unscathed, though.
Boychuk insisted that he was OK after crashing feet-first into the boards and then blocking a shot in the Bruins’ win over Carolina, but those plays eventually caught up to him. The Boston blueliner was ruled out for Monday’s matchup with the Minnesota Wild.
“Well he didn’t skate this morning because he can’t right now, he’s too sore,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said after Monday’s morning skate. “So he’s day-to-day. I don’t know, it’s obviously from the incident the other night. So he couldn’t skate this morning, he came in early and we tried to see if he could, and he couldn’t. So we’ll just go day to day with him.”
Boychuk will be replaced in the lineup by Andrej Meszaros on Monday night. Meszaros was a healthy scratch Saturday after playing in three consecutive games.
Tuukka Rask will start in net for the Bruins against Minnesota, and Darcy Kuemper will get the nod for the Wild.
Here are the projected lines and defensive pairings.
Bruins (45-17-5, 95 points)
Milan Lucic — David Krejci — Jarome Iginla
Brad Marchand — Patrice Bergeron — Reilly Smith
Chris Kelly — Carl Soderberg — Loui Eriksson
Daniel Paille — Gregory Campbell — Shawn Thornton
Zdeno Chara — Andrej Meszaros
Matt Bartkowski — Kevan Miller
Torey Krug — Dougie Hamilton
Wild (35-22-10, 80 points)
Zach Parise — Mikael Granlund — Jason Pominville
Matt Moulson — Mikko Koivu — Charlie Coyle
Matt Cooke — Kyle Brodziak — Nino Neiderreiter
Dany Heatly — Erik Haula — Justin Fontaine
Ryan Suter — Jared Spurgeon
Marco Scandella — Jonas Brodin
Clayton Stoner — Keith Ballard
