BOSTON — The Bruins were shorthanded on the blue line entering Game 7 of their first-round series against the Toronto Maple Leafs. They were already without both Andrew Ference and Wade Redden, which forced B’s head coach Claude Julien to insert two rookies into the defense corps.
Then, just 1:44 into the do-or-die, win-or-go-home showdown, the B’s were down yet another veteran D-man.
Dennis Seidenberg skated just two shifts for a total of 37 seconds of ice time before suffering an apparent lower-body injury in the first period. Seidenberg stayed on the Boston bench for the rest of the first period but didn’t see any ice time. During one TV timeout, he returned to the ice to test out the injury before returning to the bench.
Seidenberg once again returned right before the second period. He took another twirl around the ice, but he was clearly favoring something. Once again, he returned to the bench, where he remained for the rest of the period. Finally, he just stayed in the Boston dressing room after the second period ended.
Julien wasn’t able to offer much of an update after the game.
“We’ll know better [Tuesday] whether it’s a short-term or long-term,” Julien said after the game. “He wanted to [return], but when he couldn’t, it was better to take it out than to make it worse. It wouldn’t have helped us. Plus, it would have made his injury probably even worse.”
