Cassidy preps B’s for ‘sprint’
Says team must have ‘different mentality’ than training camp
Things were a little different at the Bruins’ first day of training camp practice at Warrior Ice Arena, as you might expect.
Reporters entering the facility had their temperature checked and were quizzed about whether they were experiencing any coronavirus symptoms. Behind the scenes, players wore masks whenever possible and the general team meeting was held in the more spacious dressing room instead of the video room where meetings are typically held.
But once the puck dropped at 9:30 a.m., it looked very much like a typical hockey practice, with a little shinny to start, then moving to line rushes and 3-on-3 drills.
If all goes well across the NHL — more positive tests were reported by the league on Monday — the team will head to Toronto on July 26 in its quest for the Stanley Cup. And while the league has referred to this Phase 3 of Return To Play as training camp, coach Bruce Cassidy is not looking at it quite that way, and said so in his first address to players.
“I’m going to call it Return To Play camp or Return To Play practices, because to me, training camp is a different mentality,” said Cassidy. “It’s a longer grind, it’s the beginning of a long marathon. This isn’t the case. This is the beginning of a quick return to, comparably, a sprint. And that’s the way I want to look at it. Timing and execution of our practice, we need to get it up there as quickly as possible, allowing for the obvious lapses of being on the ice, the timing of that. But that needs to be our focus every day. I think we have a very hardworking group of guys. The conditioning part is a lot of what you typically look for in training camp, and we’re going to monitor that and make sure guys are where they need to be. But it’s as much about timing and execution. We need to find our game in a hurry, so that was my message. It wasn’t long. I don’t think the players want to hear a long story.”
Cassidy left much of the spiel about protocol to the medical professionals, but did tell his players to use their heads away from the rink.
“It’s not just you. You could in essence affect up to 40 or 50 guys, so let’s do our best to social distance, wear our masks when we need to be out and try to limit contact. And that’s it. Let’s get back to work,” said Cassidy.
That message will be reinforced by the leadership group.
“Professionalism is going to be huge,” said Patrice Bergeron. “We need to rely on everyone for this thing to happen and to work. Right now in Phase 3, you’re allowed to go home. We’re not going to babysit your whereabouts and all that. It’s about trusting one another and making sure that everyone is doing the right thing and is committed to make this thing work and going forward. That’s the most important thing, to be professionals about it and be smart and use common sense.”
After GM Don Sweeney said on Sunday that a couple of international players would be missing the first day or two of training camp because of quarantine requirements, it was not surprising that Czechs David Pastrnak and Ondrej Kase were not in attendance for Day 1.
Also missing were Urho Vaakanainen, Anton Blidh, Daniel Vladar and Trent Frederic, with Frederic being the only North American among the missing.
Cassidy, prohibited by the league from giving any information about missing players, said a couple of other players would be skating later in the day and expected the absences not to last too long.
“I would expect a few more to join us (Tuesday) and then we’ll go from there on a daily basis to see where they’re at,” said Cassidy.
Assistant coach Kevin Dean was also absent but Cassidy said he was fine and expects him to be on the ice either today or Wednesday.
Some coaches around the league did not wear face coverings for practice, but the Bruins’ staff did, at the behest of their medical personnel.
“With that many players and some newness, you’re going through some new drills, we’ll follow that protocol until we’re told differently,” said Cassidy. “I know for the games we’ve been told masks are not necessary but for now we’ll try to use one as much as possible. Sometimes you do have to lower it to speak but we’ll try to remain respectful of what they’ve asked us to do and I thought it worked out well.”…
While these two weeks may not be as much as clean slate as a normal training camp, Cassidy said there is competition at the bottom of the lineup. He plans to scrimmage at the end of the week,
“There will be some evaluation during that,” said Cassidy. “You’ve got to be careful you don’t rush to judgment early on. For example today, Anders Bjork (skating in presumably Kase’s spot on David Krejci’s line) looked terrific, maybe the best player out there today. But it’s Day 1, so are we automatically saying he’s in for player soand-so? But it’s good for them. There’s competition here and I think our guys understand that. And they’ve understood it for two years here. Obviously, Bergy’s not going anywhere in the lineup. You know that. But there’s some spots where we’ve rotated guys in and out. We’ve put guys in the press box for the odd night to let them know ‘Hey listen, we expect a little bit better.’ And that won’t change.”…
Cassidy bumped Jake DeBrusk back to Krejci’s left side and had a third line of LW Nick Ritchie, C
Charlie Coyle and RW Sean Kuraly. He reserved the right to change his mind.
“We’ll look at it in practice and see if there’s any merit to it,” said Cassidy. “It’s moving one guy, Sean, to the right wing. Charlie has played center all year. We like him there. We’ll try not to move him unless it’s an in-game adjustment. … We like what (Coyle’s) done as a consistent center iceman. And Ritchie, I like him on left wing because he makes plays in small areas off the wall to a righthanded centerman. I like that part of his game that we saw before the pause. And that’s where Sean ended up, so we’ll see where it goes.”
The fourth line had Par Lindholm centering Joakim Nordstrom and Chris Wagner, while Jeremy Lauzon got the nod on the third defense pair with Matt Grzelcyk.