BOSTON — The Bruins continue to shuffle their lineup in order to facilitate rest for some and evaluation of others, and that means Shawn Thornton will get the day off Saturday.
Thornton will be a healthy scratch as the B’s take on the Carolina Hurricanes at TD Garden. That allows for Matt Lindblad to make his NHL debut. In the process, he’ll become the seventh Bruins player to make his NHL debut this season. He joins a group that includes Kevan Miller, Craig Cunningham, Niklas Svedberg, Zach Trotman, David Warsofsky and Justin Florek.
Thornton sitting also allows Daniel Paille to return to the lineup. Paille missed the last two games with a concussion, but he’s passed his tests and will be back in the lineup.
Rounding out the Bruins’ healthy scratches are defensemen Andrej Meszaros and Corey Potter as well as forward Jordan Caron. With Meszaros and Potter sitting, Torey Krug is back in the lineup after being one of the healthy scratches Thursday against Phoenix.
Chad Johnson gets the start in net for the Bruins opposite Cam Ward.
Here are the rest of the projected lines and defense pairings.
Bruins (44-17-5, 93 points)
Milan Lucic — David Krejci — Jarome Iginla
Brad Marchand — Patrice Bergeron — Reilly Smith
Chris Kelly — Carl Soderberg — Loui Eriksson
Daniel Paille — Gregory Campbell — Matt Lindblad
Zdeno Chara — Dougie Hamilton
Matt Bartkowski — Johnny Boychuk
Torey Krug — Kevan Miller
Hurricanes (29-28-9, 67 points)
Jeff Skinner — Eric Staal — Elias Lindholm
Jiri Tlusty — Jordan Staal — Alexander Semin
Nathan Gerbe — Riley Nash — Pat Dwyer
Andrei Loktionov — Manny Maholtra — Radek Dvorak
Andrej Sekara — Ryan Murphy
Ron Hainsey — Brett Bellemore
Jay Harrison — Mike Komisarek
