The Boston Bruins may only be nine games into the season, but already they’re suffering from some injury woes that led to a different-looking second line versus Toronto.
Joining David Krejci and Joakim Nordstrom on the Boston Bruins casualty list is Karson Kuhlman, who staked a claim to the right wing spot on the second line in the play-offs last year and made it stick through camp this year.
Kuhlman sustained a hairline non-displaced fracture to his right tibia in Saturday night’s loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs and thus was missing from the 4-2 Tuesday night win over the Leafs.
He is expected to be re-evaluated in four weeks and it’s likely his injury was the one that landed Anders Bjork a spot on the Boston Bruins roster as a replacement piece.
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Thus with both Krejci and Kuhlman out injured; the second line in the early-going has been completely shaken up, with only Jake Debrusk currently fit. In fact, during 5-on-5 play in the win against the Leafs, the second line (by ice-time) was actually the trio of Bjork, Sean Kuraly and Chris Wagner.
On paper, you’d probably view the grouping of Brett Ritchie, Charlie Coyle and Debrusk as the second line, but they actually tallied just over half a minute less ice-time on Tuesday night.
Perhaps telling was that this line had the worst Corsi of all the Boston Bruins lines on the night with a lowly 35.29% at five-on-five. With that said, they only saw 20% of the side’s offensive zone face-offs, so it actually ends up speaking volumes to their defensive skill that as a group, they weren’t out together on either of the two Leafs goals.
Both Chris Wagner and Sean Kuraly had to play plenty of time against the Maple Leafs’ top-line center, Auston Matthews and they did a plenty goof enough job given his complete lack of scoring on the night. In fact, I don’t recall many chances at all for him!
This is pertinent in that Anders Bjork was moved away from the slightly tougher match-up, seeing his 5-on-5 time mainly against Alexander Kerfoot and William Nylander. An injured Nordstrom, of course, would normally have been alongside Kuraly and Wagner and finds himself seldom separated in the same fashion – a sign of trust, no doubt.
The Boston Bruins looked to have turned a page on last year’s treacherous year of injuries, but already a tenth of the way through the year, they’re having to put the lines in the blender somewhat to fill in the holes.
Time will tell whether the current groups stick or whether Boston Bruins head coach, Bruce Cassidy throws them back into the blender from time-to-time!
Statistics courtesy of Natural Stat Trick.