Bruins Have ‘Fingers Crossed’ While Dealing With COVID-19 Before Canada Trip

One step forward, two steps back.

That’s what the Boston Bruins on Tuesday dealt with, getting head coach Bruce Cassidy back behind the bench but then having to send Brad Marchand and Craig Smith into the NHL’s COVID-19 protocols.

Now, all Boston can do is cross its fingers and hope that’s the end of the outbreak impacting not just the rest of the league, but all of North American professional sports.

“Yeah. We all took the shots and we’re in the same situation again, so it is disheartening,” assistant captain Taylor Hall said after a 4-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights.

“We’re on the road and we’re trying to do the right things away from hockey and it is what it is. I mean, that’s the world we live in right now. Hopefully, at some point hopefully this spring is the last time we have to deal with this stuff but it is disheartening. You’re seeing it in football, you’re seeing it in basketball, you’re seeing it all over the place and I know Smitty and Marshy are feeling fine. They could be playing the games, so we’ll just deal with it. Every team has to go through it at some point.”

For Boston, the situation had potential to be worse.

Connor Clifton, John Moore and goalie Linus Ullmark all got caught up in a testing issue, but it fortunately was sorted out before Tuesday’s game, though Jeremy Swayman started between the pipes in place of Ullmark anyway.

Now, the hope is for no positive tests to surface either before or during the Bruins’ two-game trip to Canada on Saturday and Sunday — as players could be forced to stay behind or get stuck north of the border to quarantine for Christmas.

“We had a little bit of a scare yesterday. Today it’s real. Couple other ones were close, so it was an interesting day in that regard,” Cassidy said Tuesday.

“Let’s hope that’s the end of it. We’ve lost two key players. We were fortunate enough up until now, we didn’t lose anybody. So now you got two and who knows tomorrow, right? You see different teams string two or three days together. We got our fingers crossed.”

Boston starts off a three-game road trip Thursday against the New York Islanders before taking off to Canada.