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| Johnny Boychuk via csnne.com |
Thursday night’s win over Anaheim came with a big loss. Being considered day-to-day, Johnny Boychuk left in the second period of that game with an undisclosed injury. Boychuk crashed hard into the boards and after getting off the ice wasn’t able to return to action. This led to big time minutes being played by the younger group of the Bruin’s defense core with Dougie Hamilton skating 15:24 minutes and Torey Krug playing almost 19 minutes with 18:54. The more veteran players, Dennis Sidenberg, Adam McQuaid and Zdeno Chara all put up 20 minutes plus with Chara topping all with 29:45 time on ice.
Coach Claude Julien was impressed by the way the defensemen came together to power through the second of their back to back games having played the night before in Pittsburgh. Especially being down one man on the bench for the majority of the game.
Well, it’s gutsy; any time you play two and two [back-to-back], I don’t know how many people realize how tough that game was in Pittsburgh. You come back and you play a team that’s fresh and then you’re cut down to five D’s because you don’t have a choice; it was hard.
Lucky for the B’s they are pretty strong with young defensive talent with Matt Bartkowski waiting in the wings to help pick up the slack, if needed, on Saturday night against the Islanders. Boychuk is expected to make the trip to Long Island and Julien relayed to the media that Boychuk is “feeling better”. We will wait and see to find out if #55 will be suiting up tomorrow night.
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| Loui Eriksson via Brian Babineau/Getty Images |
In other injury related news, Loui Eriksson has passed his exertion test and is cleared to start working out after being taken out indefinitely due to a concussion sustained from a head shot by Buffalo’s John Scott. It will be a take it slow, day-to-day process to get Eriksson back into the swing of things but being cleared to get back to working out is a positive step for the Bruin winger. Scott had served three of the seven games of his suspension for the illegal hit and was awaiting an in person hearing with the NHL Department of Player Safety. The hearing was held yesterday, Oct. 31.
