The roster merry-go-round continued for the Boston Bruins on Monday.
The good news for the Bruins is a handful of players who missed practice Saturday — deemed “unfit to participate” — were back on the ice Monday morning at Warrior Ice Arena in Brighton, Mass.
Charlie Coyle, David Krejci, Torey Krug, Sean Kuraly, Tuukka Rask, Nick Ritchie and Chris Wagner all missed practice Saturday. Also absent were David Pastrnak and Ondrej Kase, who have missed just about all of the Phase 3 practice sessions as they reportedly quarantine after coming into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
Pastrnak and Kase remained absent Monday, but Coyle, Krejci, Krug, Kuraly, Rask and Ritchie returned. Wagner wasn’t spotted on the ice and neither was defenseman Charlie McAvoy, who was the newest Bruins player to miss a session.
McAvoy, as well as the other three players, were absent under the unfit to participate tag, per head coach Bruce Cassidy.
As a result, Cassidy had to once again shake up his lines for the practice. Here are the Bruins’ lines and defensive pairings from Monday’s practice, per the team’s Twitter account.
Brad Marchand — Patrice Bergeron — Anders Bjork
Jake DeBrusk — David Krejci — Karson Kuhlman
Sean Kuraly — Charlie Coyle — Nick Ritchie
Joakim Nordstrom — Par Lindholm — Zach Senyshyn
Trent Frederic — Jack Studnicka — Paul Carey
Zdeno Chara — Jakub Zboril
Torey Krug — Brandon Carlo
Matt Grzelcyk — Jeremy Lauzon
John Moore — Connor Clifton
Urho Vaakanainen
Cassidy, unsurprisingly, says he hasn’t made any lineup decisions with the Bruins’ first round-robin game less than two weeks away.
“Clearly, some guys when they get back to our team, they’re gonna go into the lineup. But we’ve also said there are some battles,” Cassidy said.
Getting everyone back on the ice at the same time would go a long way in helping decide those battles. Easier said than done in this “new” NHL.
