More details on the injuries to Bergeron, Marchand and Lindholm.

The Boston Bruins are playing without three of their most important players today with captain Patrice Bergeron, forward Brad Marchand and defenseman Hampus Lindholm all out of the lineup due to nagging injuries..

Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery confirmed the bad news on Sunday, indicating that Bergeron, Lindholm and Marchand are dealing with nagging injuries and adding that Bergeron was also dealing with an illness.. That didn't sound too serious at the time, but additional comments from Montgomery on the topic appear to indicate that the Bruins' big guns could miss additional time down the final stretch of the regular season.

First, Montgomery cleared up Bergeron's absence by indicating that the captain of the Bruins had become progressively more ill over the course of the Bruins win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday.

"First of all Bergy Marchy and Lindholm aren't playing because of nagging injuries," revealed Montgomery on Sunday. "And Bergy was also under the weather yesterday and it got progressively worse during the game."

The Bruins head coach would go on to confirm that these "nagging injuries" had reached the point of being pretty serious, indicating that it was fortunate the Bruins had clinched the division so early.

"It's nice," admitted Montgomery. "We don't want to get to the point where they couldn't play and it's getting close to that point... because of those nagging injuries they're playing through some pain right now, and we don't want them to progressively get worse."

The Bruins are, quite understandably, now laser focused on the Stanley Cup playoffs and it seems likely that if their players are banged up they will be granted additional time off to fully recover before those playoffs get underway. This likely means that we could see these players miss even more time, although we likely won't know for sure until we get closer to Tuesday's game against the Nashville Predators.