The last few weeks have forced everyone to change their lifestyles a bit.
Hockey players are no exception.
The NHL season was put on pause amid the COVID-19 outbreak, and it’s unclear when or if the campaign will pick up and come to a conclusion of some kind.
And the Boston Bruins, like the rest of us, are trying to figure out how they can stay in touch with one another.
“We stay in close contact, we have a few different things on the go that we’re talking about, including discussions of what the rest of the season might look like or how certain things are going,” Bruins defenseman Torey Krug said during a conference call with the media Tuesday. “We have a couple of charity endeavors that we’re talking about doing. Yeah, just the normal, silly stuff. We go back and forth — I’m sure I’ll get chirped a little bit for how I look on this video, I know guys are paying attention to social media more and more, so any time something funny comes up we try to put it in the chat just to keep that bond going.
“But everyone’s in a different situation, some guys are chasing around kids all day, other guys are sleeping and getting their workouts in and maybe playing more video games than normal. So everyone’s got their phone in hand at some point and it’s just fun to go back and forth a little bit.”
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The games themselves aren’t the only thing taking a pause. Krug and Bruins winger Brad Marchand fairly routinely exchange barbs with one another on social media, but that too has reached an armistice.
But when asked about the ongoing feud’s moratorium, Krug delivered a heartfelt answer.
“Tell you what, it feels pretty good (to not be getting roasted by Marchand every day),” Krug said. “But you know what, we do miss the guys. And that’s one of the things, the going back and forth every day, I just miss the simple conversations. Seeing what (David Pastrnak’s) wearing when he walks in the door, wondering what kind of mood Chris Wagner is going to be in or seeing (Charlie McAvoy) and his big smile walk through the door every day, and trying to make sense of what comes out of Jake DeBrusk’s mouth.
“There’s just so many things that you miss from a day-to-day basis, but that’s just the reality of the situation that we’re going through right now.”
At the moment, there are no concrete plans for a return date for hockey. The latest is that the league reportedly is investigating if holding games at neutral, isolated sites like Grand Forks, ND, or Manchester, NH, is doable.
