Boston Bruins forward Brad Marchand was missing from today’s practice at Ristuccia Arena. Marchand was taken out of action in Saturday night’s action against the Montreal Canadiens. Marchand was taken out by an inadvertent elbow to the head from Montreal forward Dale Weise. (As much as I hate to say this, it was an honest accident.) The injury was more bad luck than malfeasance of the Habs.
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Here’s another view of the hit. As much as I want to blame this on Weise, this is Marchand skating into a player taking a shot.
Here is where Marchand got hurt, by Dale Weise's elbowhttps://t.co/Vk0eeI2yGK
— Stanley Cup of Chowder (@cupofchowdah) October 11, 2015
Claude Julien told the media after practice that Marchand sustained his second career concussion. Yeah, March suffered a concussion,” said Julien after practice. “We’re going about it with the League’s protocol with concussions and his return will be dictated by how quickly he recovers…so we have no timetable for him.”
For the moment, the Bruins winger will be out indefinitely with no immediate timetable for his return. Things have been rough for the 0-2 Bruins, and Marchand’s absence will only make things worse for the Black and Gold.
Puck Prose
This forces the Bruins to once again modify their lines. Brett Connolly got the bump up to the B’s top line with Patrice Bergeron. Loui Eriksson will switch his position on the wing. Chris Kelly will be moved up from the fourth line to the third. Hopefully Kelly can bring some offensive punch to the line centered by Ryan Spooner line. The B’s third line was invisible against Montreal, putting up no shots on goal on Saturday.
“We need everybody right now,” offered the Bruins bench boss on the line moves. “There’s a lot of people that we need to get more out of it, if we’re going to battle our way out of this. This is where we need players to really step up.”
“That’s just one of the changes due to injury, but you know, we hope that we can have more guys just kind of pick up here and give us some help in different areas.”
“Guys are given opportunities, doesn’t mean that they necessarily earned it — it’s that you’ve got confidence in them that they can help and then it’s up to them to take it over and show that we’ve made the right decision and prove that they do belong there,” said Julien focusing on Connolly’s promotion to the B’s top line. “I think the biggest thing for Brett is going to be to show it, versus worrying about us whether we made the right decision or not — he’s got to show us.”