Boston Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy is going to have to get creative on the back end Sunday night against the Vegas Golden Knights.
Playing the second game of a back-to-back at TD Garden, the B’s likely will be without defenseman Brandon Carlo due to an upper-body injury. With Charlie McAvoy recovering from a concussion, Carlo had been serving as the right-side top pairing defenseman with Zdeno Chara.
And since Kevan Miller and Urho Vaakanainen also are ailing, Jeremy Lauzon, who was recalled from Providence on an emergency basis Sunday, should see some action.
However, that means the Bruins will be employing five left-shot defensemen, with Steven Kampfer being the only true right-shot blueliner.
John Moore already is playing on his off side, skating on the right side of Torey Krug on the second pairing. Since Lauzon will be playing in his fifth career NHL game, moving him to the right may not be the best idea. As such, one has to think Lauzon will go to the left of Kampfer on the third pairing and Matt Grzelcyk will go on the right side next to Chara on the top unit.
What is expected to be stable for Boston is its forward group, which peppered the Toronto Maple Leafs with five goals, three from David Pastrnak, in Saturday’s 5-1 win. The bottom six forward group that worked well together upon getting shuffled by Cassidy before Saturday’s game is expected to remain intact.
Jaroslav Halak will start in goal for the Bruins, while Malcolm Subban gets the nod in net for Vegas.
Here are the projected lines and defense pairings for Sunday night’s Bruins-Golden Knights game.
BOSTON BRUINS (9-5-2)
Brad Marchand — Patrice Bergeron — David Pastrnak
Joakim Nordstrom — David Krejci — Jake DeBrusk
Danton Heinen — David Backes — Anders Bjork
Chris Wagner — Sean Kuraly — Noel Acciari
Zdeno Chara — Matt Grzelcyk
Torey Krug — John Moore
Jeremy Lauzon — Steven Kampfer
Jaroslav Halak
VEGAS GOLDEN KNIGHTS (7-9-1)
Jonathan Marchessault — William Karlsson — Reilly Smith
Max Pacioretty — Cody Eakin — Alex Tuch
Tomas Nosek — Ryan Carpenter — Tomas Hyka
Will Carrier — Pierre-Edouard Bellemare — Ryan Reaves
Brayden McNabb — Colin Miller
Shea Theodore — Deryk Engelland
Brad Hunt — Nick Holden
Malcolm Subban
