The Boston Bruins, like the rest of the NHL, have begun practices for the post-Olympic break, which is going to be a grind with a heated postseason race coming up. Boston begins the final stretch four points up on the Washington Capitals and Columbus Blue Jackets. Washington is supposed to play the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday night, while the Bruins will be the Blue Jackets' first opponent out of the break at the TD Garden on Thursday night.
There are a handful of games for some teams coming off the Olympic break. However, it appears that Boston has caught a break with the schedule. Why? Well, there are a couple of reasons.
Bruins capture big schedule break following Olympics
The Bruins have two players who were in the Gold Medal Game on Sunday for the United States: defenseman Charlie McAvoy and goalie Jeremy Swayman. There is a glaring problem facing the players returning: a blizzard.
Team USA was supposed to fly their players from the Olympics to New York on Monday to get connecting flights to the city where they're going to meet their teammates. However, the crippling storm in the Northeast changed those plans. Instead, the players flew into Miami and will attempt to get to their cities from there. If you're going anywhere in the Northeast, yeah, good luck.
Everything was shut down on Monday, and with 2-3 feet of snow and massive storm damage, it might be some time before players can get home. As far as the Bruins go, they canceled their Monday practice and now will likely do something on Tuesday, if they can get to Warrior Ice Arena. Again, that might be easier said than done.
So what does this mean? Well, considering both of their goalies were part of teams playing over the weekend in the medal games, it makes you wonder how quickly that can get back to Boston. Head coach Marco Sturm said over the weekend that it would be important that his goalies get some reps in practice. Joonas Korpisalo was likely able to get back to Boston before the storm, and if he did, it makes too much sense for him to get some reps by Wednesday and Thursday morning and get the start against Columbus.
Whatever ends up happening, the Bruins appear to have caught a major break by not having to rush back into an important game on Wednesday night given the storm that crippled the Northeast.