Updates on Bergeron, Marchand and Krejci on Saturday.
Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery had a mixed bag of news to share on Saturday regarding the status of his players.
The Boston Bruins are just days away from the start of the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs and after such a successful regular season effort, you know the expectations being placed on the Bruins' shoulders are at an all-time high.
That being said things aren't perfect for the Bruins coming into the playoffs and unfortunately that appears to include a few things on the injury front as well. On Saturday, Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery provided a number of status updates regarding his core players, including an update on the status of Bruins captain Patrice Bergeron.
"You know we're just giving him extra rest," said Montgomery on Saturday. "He's had a long year."
Bergeron was notably absent from practice on Saturday and after he left the final game of the regular season early, that has understandably caused some concern ahead of the playoffs. That being said Montgomery downplayed the situation as best that he could and did something similar when the topic of Bruins forward Marchand came up.
"Same thing with Marchy," said Montgomery. "Marchy wanted to give it a try today and he had a little bit of soreness so I said 'Get off the ice.'"
Montgomery cited a hard practice repeatedly as the reason for being extra careful with some of his guys on Saturday, something that lines up with the scrimmage the Bruins had on the day. It sounds like Nick Foligno, Derek Forbort, and perhaps the returning David Krejci were the motivating factors behind that particular decision.
"The reason I wanted to have a hard practice with some scrimmage involved is we're looking at Foligno and Forbort and we wanna see where their condition at game speed is," confirmed Montgomery.
You can hear the full comments from the Bruins head coach in the short clip below: