Injury Bug Not the Only Problem Dogging the Bruins

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Jan 8, 2010

Injury Bug Not the Only Problem Dogging the Bruins Bruins center Marc Savard is the latest player to get hurt in a week that started with leading scorer Patrice Bergeron breaking his thumb defenseman Andrew Ference suffering a groin injury and forward Byron Bitz missing Thursday's 5-2 loss to the Blackhawks and ruled out for Saturday's tilt with the Rangers.The Bruins are also still missing defenseman Mark Stuart.

Bergeron is expected to miss two weeks, while Ference will be gone for six weeks. On Friday, Savard had an MRI done and the Bruins will announce the results prior to the Bruins matinee with the Rangers. But in the noon hour on Friday Darren Dreger of TSN reported that if an MRI was being done, the minimum Savard would miss would be two to three weeks.

When asked if there is some sort of injury curse hanging over the Bruins this season, forward Milan Lucic, who himself just returned from a high ankle sprain suffered on Nov. 25, replied, “Seems like it. Seems like when one guy comes back another guy goes down. And you know, obviously, losing Savvy [Savard] in the first 30 seconds out there [on Thursday] didn't help at all.”

But as Lucic and many other Bruins pointed out, every team faces adversity, and while the Bruins have seemed to face more than other teams, they must meet the challenge and adapt.

"It's just adversity that we have to face and it's the cards that we've [been dealt]," Lucic said. "Again, we're going to need guys to step up. It's happened before in the past so this is a chance for guys to step up. I know for myself now, I have to step my game up and try to get back and help this team and get back to where I was before I got injured.”

The problem, as head coach Claude Julien pointed out earlier in the week, is that most players aren’t stepping up and don’t seem willing to face the adversity head-on. Defenseman Derek Morris is puzzled as to why this has been the case this season.

“I wish I knew — I think if I knew, I’d answer it,” he said. “We only have a handful of guys competing every single night. They’re going out there and playing hard. I think we just have to look in the mirror. Some guys have to look in the mirror. All of us have to look in the mirror and say, ‘Did I play my best?’ I can’t remember one guy who can go in there and say the whole team played [its] best.”

Morris wasn’t excluding himself from this phenomenon; he believes there is a team-wide lack of consistency afflicting the Bruins.

“I’m not going to make an excuse and blame it on someone else," Morris said. "We all have to be better. [It’s as] simple as that. It’s not one guy. It’s Z [Zdeno Chara]. It’s me. It’s Timmy [Thomas]. It’s everyone. We’re going to win a couple here. We’re going to win a couple there. We’ll probably get in the playoffs, but it’s not going to be a solid team until we all take a look in the mirror.”

No can argue the fact that the constant barrage of injuries is affecting the Bruins and that they could be better if they weren’t constantly having to reshuffle their lines. As Morris pointed out, though, with the lack of effort and desire, the Bruins wouldn’t be that much better.

“Every other team is shorthanded, too, in the league,” Morris said. “Everybody’s got injuries. That’s an easy excuse. Like I said, we all have to look in the mirror. All the way from the top to the bottom, [we need to] say, ‘Did I play my best? Did we play our best every single night?’"

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