Over the last couple of weeks, there have been a lot of moving parts for the Boston Bruins. There have been a number of reasons for those moving parts from injuries to roster shakeups to head coach Jim Montgomery sending messages. Saturday morning ahead of an afternoon game against the St. Louis Blues at the TD Garden, the moves kept on coming, but with tough news.
Four days after suffering a lower-body injury against the Blues in St. Louis on Tuesday night, defenseman Hampus Lindholm got devastating news and was placed on injured reserve. In the first period of the Black and Gold's 3-2 win where they scored three goals in the final 20 minutes to overcome a two-goal deficit, he blocked a shot on the penalty kill and immediately went to the locker room and didn't return. He was ruled out in the second period for the rest of the game, then Wednesday Montgomery said he would be out "weeks.''
Bruins make a slew of roster moves ahead of St. Louis matchup
Aside from placing Lindholm on injured reserve, the Bruins made more moves, sending veteran forward Patrick Brown back to the Providence Bruins in the American Hockey League (AHL), while re-calling forward Georgii Merkulov and Riley Tufte.
Tufte in two games has no points this season for the Bruins averaging just 8:08 a night. Signed as a free agent on July 1, Tufte will get another shot it appears. Merkulov was expected to fight for a roster spot in training camp, but things didn't end up working out that way, he has been very good through the first month in the AHL for the P-Bruins with two goals and nine assists. He played in four games last season for Montgomery averaging 10:35 a night.
Replacing Lindholm on defense is not going to be easy, but this is where Mason Lohrei and Nikita Zadorov need to step up. The latter has been a disappointment so far. Boston appears to have avoided a major disaster with an injury to Brandon Carlo who took a heavy hit in the first period against the Dallas Stars on Thursday night but returned to the game.