Adam McQuaid is back, and hopefully for his and the Bruins’ sake, it’s for good this time.
The banged-up Boston blue liner had missed the last nine games with a lingering groin injury, but he has been cleared and will be back in the Boston lineup on Monday night in Nashville when Boston takes on the Predators.
It’s McQuaid’s second return from injury this season. He missed eight games after originally suffering the injury, but he may have returned just a little too soon. After three games back from injury, McQuaid reaggravated the same injury in a game against Columbus. He’s been out since then, and the B’s have had to lean on younger defensemen like Kevan Miller and most recently David Warsofsky.
The return of McQuaid will help start to stabilize the Boston blue line, a unit that has had more than its share of injuries this season. Fellow D-man Dougie Hamilton is still out with a lower-body injury, but he continues to make strides, as he skated for the first time over the weekend since suffering the injury.
Here are the projected lines and defensive pairings for the Bruins-Predators game.
Bruins (24-10-2, 50 points)
Milan Lucic — David Krejci — Jarome Iginla
Brad Marchand — Patrice Bergeron — Reilly Smith
Carl Soderberg — Ryan Spooner — Matt Fraser
Jordan Caron — Gregory Campbell — Nick Johnson
Zdeno Chara — Johnny Boychuk
Dennis Seidenberg — Matt Bartkowski
Torey Krug — Adam McQuaid
Predators (16-16-4, 36 points)
Eric Nystrom — Mike Fisher — Viktor Stalberg
Colin Wilson — Matt Cullen — Craig Smith
Nick Spaling — David Legwand — Patric Hornqvist
Richard Clune — Paul Gaustad — Matt Hendricks
Shea Weber — Roman Josi
Ryan Ellis — Kevin Klein
Seth Jones — Victor Bartley
