Boston Bruins: More Injuries, More Headaches.
The Boston Bruins have really worried their fan base. Their lackluster play, coupled with serious injuries have made a playoff berth seem doubtful. The Bruins are sticking with their ‘one game at a time’ mentality. Hopefully, they’ll be able to focus when they welcome the Anaheim Ducks to the TD Garden.
“Again, I keep the same thing I said yesterday, these next nine games will give me the answer to that,” said Coach Claude Julien said to the media after yesterday’s practice. “And I’m standing here preparing the team for this next game. Not looking any further than Anaheim, and we need one game here to get the right results, to get us going, so I’m not looking any further than that.”
“Overall, these next nine games will tell the tale of our season. That’s my take on it.”
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“When you have more than two days between games, at this time of the year, you don’t want to miss the opportunity to work on different things and have good practices.” Bruins captain Zdeno Chara
Now the Bruins will need to dig deeper to make up for the loss of Dougie Hamilton. Hamilton’s status is unknown, but it’s likely he’ll miss the remaining regular season games in Boston. (If the Bruins get to the playoffs, they could be without him for the entire stretch of the postseason as well.) It’s been rough enough for the Bruins blueliners this year, and it makes it worse when they lose a top pair defenseman. The twenty-one year old is currently third on the team averaging 21:20 of ice time per game. He’s also second on the team in scoring with forty-two points (ten goals) this season.
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Now the Bruins having to go in against the Ducks while down a top defenseman. This will be a rough game for Boston if they can’t play to their system. They’ll have to find a way to come up with goals if they want to have any kind of hope of remaining in playoff contention this season.
“Obviously he’s a big part of our team, but we’ve had injuries all year and we’ve dealt with that all year. We’ll just have to find a way to play without him,” said Zdeno Chara.
This means a lot of the Bruins fans’ hopes will now be resting on another rookie miracle. The Bruins have seen them in the past. Brad Marchand, Tyler Seguin, and Torey Krug have all come out of the box swinging for the Bruins in their first seasons, so we could get lucky again.
If were going to see that kind of luck, we’re going to need to see something extra from defenseman Zach Trotman. Trotman has a similar profile to Hamilton(The most likely reason why he was called up from Providence). He’s a big kid that can bring a strong right-handed shot. He’s not afraid to go on the attack either. Trotman will likely end up on the bottom pair, so hopefully he’ll be able to give the B’s some production while taking on the Ducks third and fourth lines.
If the B’s can keep up in transition, then the game can work itself out. If the B’s can stay away from sloppy defensive work, they’ll be alright. Sadly, those are two big “ifs” for a battered Boston team fighting for playoff survival.