Fans outside TD Garden couldn’t escape the harsh weather on Monday night and, it looked like the Garden ice surface couldn’t escape it inside, either.
Temperatures were in the 80s on Monday, with a thunderstorm and hail capping things off in the late afternoon. Although it wasn’t a rerun of 1988’s fog/power outage affair at the old Garden, it still seemed to affect the sheet.
“It is pretty bad,” Dennis Seidenberg said of the ice after the Bruins’ 2-0 win. “When you try to shoot, try to swing your blade on the ice, it feels like it’s sandpaper. It’s really rough. When you try to pass, the puck bounces. If there’s a play to be made, you have to make sure it’s an easy one. If not, you rather choose to go over the wall and out.”
Although it wasn’t confirmed by Zdeno Chara, the captain took a spill during pregame warmups. Chara told reporters he “lost an edge” while the B’s warmed up and took out Milan Lucic. Big Zee gathered himself and headed for the locker room where he reportedly received stitches.
“The ice was not the best [on Monday night],” Seidenberg explained. “A few guys had to get their skates sharpened, or the sharpness adjusted.”
“The ice was pretty good in the start of the periods,” Tuukka Rask said, “then pretty quickly it got really chippy. It’s tough to get the read off of shots when it’s really a mess out there with the ice. You just got to be extra careful with the crazy bounces and stuff.”
