BOSTON — Daniel Paille will return to the Bruins’ lineup Thursday night, as they take on the Montreal Canadiens in Game 1 of their second-round Stanley Cup playoff series at TD Garden.
Paille has been out since the Bruins’ penultimate regular-season game April 12 against the Buffalo Sabres. In that game, the Boston winger took a big hit from Jake McCabe, and the result was Paille’s third concussion of the season. He said earlier this week that he probably could have played in the Bruins’ first-round series win over the Detroit Red Wings, but the Boston medical staff didn’t want to push things.
Now Paille has received a clean bill of health and will be back in the Bruins’ lineup as they face their biggest rivals. Paille’s return should help the Bruins on two fronts. The first is that Paille’s speed — he’s arguably the team’s quickest skater — should help neutralize some of Montreal’s team speed. Paille also will help out on the penalty kill, which could be very important given the animosity between these clubs.
Boston winger Brad Marchand is in the lineup, as is Montreal winger Max Pacioretty. Both players missed their team’s morning skate.
Here are the rest of the projected lines and defensive pairs for Game 1.
Bruins
Milan Lucic — David Krejci — Jarome Iginla
Brad Marchand — Patrice Bergeron — Reilly Smith
Justin Florek — Carl Soderberg — Loui Eriksson
Daniel Paille — Gregory Campbell — Shawn Thornton
Zdeno Chara — Dougie Hamilton
Matt Bartkowski — Johnny Boychuk
Torey Krug — Kevan Miller
Canadiens
Max Pacioretty — David Desharnais — Thomas Vanek
Brandon Prust — Tomas Plekanec — Brendan Gallagher
Rene Bourque — Lars Eller — Brian Gionta
Travis Moen — Danny Briere — Dale Weise
Josh Gorges — P.K. Subban
Andrei Markov — Alexei Emelin
Francis Boullon — Mike Weaver
