Boston Bruins Work Through Injury Adversity, ‘Have To Keep Building’

The Bruins dropped to a 19-5-5 record after losing 2-1 in overtime to the New York Rangers at TD Garden Saturday night.

The Boston Bruins entered the third period of Saturday night’s game against the New York Rangers up 1-0 before giving up the equalizer and ultimately falling 2-1 in overtime.

It’s not how you want to lose on home ice in a battle between the two top teams in the Eastern Conference, but the Bruins are taking positives from the way their short-handed group has handled itself in the absence of some key players.

“If you look at the adversity within the game that we faced, really proud of our group for the desperation that we played with, the togetherness,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said.

“I think our resiliency, it shows. We’re building some good things here with a lot of people getting minutes who normally wouldn’t have if we were healthy.”

The B’s are currently without Charlie McAvoy, Pavel Zacha and Derek Forbort due to injury. Within Saturday’s game, Matt Poitras left – and returned – after getting hit into the boards, and leading-scorer David Pastrnak was dealt a game misconduct for boarding in the second period.

All that to say, the Bruins have had to lean on their depth players to provide support while their stars are sidelined – and for the most part, it has worked. Morgan Geekie has been strong and consistent in a top-six center role, Parker Wotherspoon adjusted to first-pair minutes after getting called up from AHL Providence and Poitras found some spunk despite recent scratches.

“To break into the league, you need guys to go down unfortunately,” Brad Marchand said. “We need you to come in and make an impact and there’s an opportunity right now for some guys to step up and show what they can do and have more minutes and be in different situations.”

Trent Frederic was another example of this Saturday night. Frederic scored his seventh goal of the season off an extra-effort, net-front play, and sparked the bench by dropping the gloves with Rangers captain Jacob Trouba in the second period. What’s more, Frederic has shown his versatility and shifted over to center when needed.

While Boston has been able to rely on all-star goaltending from both Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman – who had 32 saves against the Rangers – everyone in the lineup, no matter their standing, has been pulling the rope in the same direction.

The Bruins have lost games without their headline guys, but they haven’t simply fallen apart. That’s important.

“You go through adversity within the game and the season. That’s what makes it fun, honestly,” Charlie Coyle said. “Seeing different guys step up in different situations – are we happy that we lost in overtime? No, of course not, there’s things we can work on. But there were some good things there.”

Boston should be getting a bit closer to full-health next week. Montgomery said he was “very very hopeful” that McAvoy and Zacha could return for Tuesday’s game against the Minnesota Wild. Forbot is first eligible to return on Dec. 31 when the Bruins face the Detroit Red Wings.

Until then, though, the B’s will continue to fine-tune the details while not straying from the grinding team game they’ve held onto through the injury adversity.

“When you lose some of your top guys, it definitely impacts the group,” Marchand said. “Having them out hurts for sure, but I think our game is coming and we are doing some good things, but have to keep building.”