TAMPA, Fla. — The Bruins returned to practice Friday afternoon at the St. Pete Times Forum fresh off their impressive 2-0 win in Game 3 Thursday night, but there were a few missing bodies at the workout.
Veterans like Mark Recchi, Zdeno Chara and Tim Thomas all took the day off, which wasn't a surprise. But the absence of David Krejci did raise some concerns as he was shaken up Thursday on a huge hit by Tampa Bay defenseman Marc-Andre Bergeron.
Krejci returned to finish the game, and Friday, Bruins coach Claude Julien insisted the day off from practice was not injury-related.
"David is fine," Julien said. "We had a bunch of guys stay off today. It's more of an optional and short skate. So there's no issues with David. He's playing [Saturday] with no issues at all."
As for the hit itself, which earned Bergeron two minutes in the box for elbowing, Julien had no problems with the play and even questioned whether it deserved to be called a penalty.
"I guess if you have time to look at the replay — you can look at it in slow motion and do all that stuff — you can say, well, it was a good hit," Julien said. "And it's happened to us before from our end of it. And sometimes you get called for penalties. The one thing that we always said is that the league is very sensitive to head issues. So sometimes, they're making a call.
"And maybe it wasn't the right call," Julien added. "But at the same time, they could have had a second penalty on that same play where the goaltender [Dwayne Roloson] touched the puck outside the area, and the referee was there, and I think he didn't call it because [he was] probably trying to make up for it. So this is about being smart about those kind of things, and there was no issues from my end of it. [It] kind of made up for it, so I think it all evened out in the end. And that's what we talk about when you play the games.
"For the most part," Julien added, "you're always going to get some tough calls going against you or against the other team, and at the end of the night, most of the time it all evens out. So it's just one of those situations."
