BRIGHTON, Mass. — There was a reason why Boston Bruins forward Patrice Bergeron played his most games this season since the 2016-17 campaign.
Bergeron had a good bill of health — except for the requisite bumps and bruises — right up until the regular-season finale against the Montreal Canadiens when he suffered a herniated disk in his back, something he revealed following Boston’s brutal Game 7 loss on home ice to the Florida Panthers.
“Overall, I was healthy all year,” Bergeron said Tuesday during exit interview day at Warrior Ice Arena. “It’s always been the same kind of things with me, hips and groins and all that. But it was manageable all year and again obviously the back flared up unfortunately at the wrong time.”
The injury caused Bergeron to miss the first four games of the series against the Panthers. It seemed like an avoidable injury, though, with Bruins coach Jim Montgomery making the curious decision to play the 37-year-old in a game that had absolutely zero consequence with Boston already locking up the NHL’s regular-season wins record and its playoff status.
Bergeron said his back injury wasn’t something he was nursing heading into that contest against the Canadiens. He added that he had a discussion with Montgomery about his health as the regular season came to a close and they also mapped out his usage.
“I was healthy,” Bergeron said. “Again, to that question, it was the plan. We’d talked about it for two or three weeks — probably two weeks in advance or two and a half or whatever. I talked about my hips and my groins. I needed to not play the back-to-backs and kind of heal that and make sure I was staying on top of that. Not necessarily heal it because it wasn’t that much of an issue.
“But then that last week, everybody was going to be part of those two games to be ready for the playoffs. So that was the talk that Monty kind of had with me, and I agreed. So the Montreal game I was healthy and it was a coincidence that it was in Montreal.”
While Bergeron didn’t second-guess the decision for him to play against the Canadiens, hindsight is always 20/20, even for Bruins captain.
“It’s just an unfortunate moment and timing to happen,” Bergeron said. “Looking back if I had a crystal ball, obviously I wouldn’t have played in that game. But nobody knew that.”
