How Bruins Have Missed This Injured Under-The-Radar Forward

While much attention has been paid to the absence of Jake DeBrusk, he isn’t the only injured player coach Jim Montgomery believes the Boston Bruins have missed as of late.

Tomas Nosek doesn’t have the same notoriety as DeBrusk, but the impact of the fourth-line center being out since Jan. 19 due to a foot fracture certainly has been felt, especially at the faceoff dot.

That was most evident in Boston’s thrilling overtime road win in Dallas on Tuesday, with the Stars dominating the Bruins in faceoffs. The Bruins lost 50 of 62 draws.

Montgomery feels that when Nosek is on the ice, it allows the Bruins to have better matchups in the faceoff department.

“He changes the mix,” Montgomery told reporters prior to Thursday’s game against the Nashville Predators, per team-provided video. “Allows me to put him in situations, and our team in situations, especially when the faceoffs are on the left side, where he wins a lot of faceoffs for us so we’re not putting right shots in disadvantageous situations.”

Nosek has won 58.3% of his faceoffs this year, which is his best mark since the 2018-19 campaign when he won draws at a 62.1% clip with the Vegas Golden Knights. But that was a much smaller sample size — he took 152 total faceoffs that season — compared to how often the Bruins have used Nosek at the dot in his first two years in Boston. This season alone Nosek has 179 wins on draws.

Montgomery said Nosek might be a “viable option” to return to the lineup during the Bruins’ upcoming four-game road trip, which begins next Thursday against the Seattle Kraken, to close out the month of February.