B’s finally return to Garden
Face Flyers sans fans tonight
The last time the Bruins played a game at the Garden, the place was absolutely rocking. They played an oldfashioned emotional, gloveto-the-face battle against their current chief rival, the Tampa Bay Lightning. You could just taste the impending playoffs.
Well, a few things have happened since then. A onein-a-century pandemic has changed life as we know it. Long-time captain Zdeno Chara is gone. Ditto for Torey Krug.
And when the B’s open their home schedule tonight at the Garden, they will not have the usual 17,565 screeching fans to pull them out of the goalscoring doldrums they find themselves in after three road games.
On Wednesday, the B’s held a rare practice at the Garden to re-familiarize themselves with their old friend after over 10 months away from Causeway Street.
“The aura of playing in the Boston Garden feels special every time coming back here,” said Matt Grzelcyk, who participated fully in practice and expects to play tonight against the Flyers after leaving Monday’s game with an apparent left arm or shoulder injury.
“Obviously, we’ll miss having the fans cheer in the Garden, but we’ll try to find our game as quick as we can. I think we’re quite used to it going through the experience of playing in the bubble. It’s certainly an advantage getting to play in front of our home fans here. Talking to other players around the league, it can be a pretty intimidating place to play and we usually feed off their energy. But we’ve had a little bit of experience in the past, so hopefully we can come out of the gate blazing right away and get to our game early.”
In one sense, playing in an empty building is old news for the Bruins. They did it for a month in the playoff bubble in Toronto last summer and they’ve played three games on the road in New Jersey and Long Island. But they’ve yet to play in an empty Garden.
During practice on Wednesday, the game operations folks were getting their own practice in with the pumped in crowd noise throughout the session. At one point, David Pastrnak scored a goal, and exhorted the invisible fans to pump up the volume. That’s about all the tangible encouragement they’ll get.
“I actually talked to (Celtics’ coach) Brad Stevens about the fans part of it. He said it was different at first. I think it’s going to take a little while to get used to it,” said coach Bruce Cassidy. “I think it’s going to be a little like the first time in Toronto when we were in the bubble and you’re looking around. And it’ll be unfortunate (not to have fans) because we’re use to coming out, you know the songs that are playing, you know the crowd’s behind you. It’s really helped us in the past and obviously we won’t have that. As for the drive in? Mostly uneventful. Very little traffic. I could get used to that.”
Still, Cassidy does expect the friendly environment will give them some advantage, however minimal it may be.
“There’s still a certain amount of familiarity with your dressing room, the building, the rink, the lighting. All those things can give you something of an advantage, not like it would be with a full crowd but hopefully it does for us. Because it’s been a long time since we’ve played here and we’ve been a really good team here at TD Garden the last few years and we want to make sure we keep going in the right direction,” said Cassidy.
Right now, the B’s can use any edge they can get. While their in-zone defending and penalty killing has been a bright spot, especially with the incorporation of two young blue liners into the lineup, the unavoidable story line of the season thus far has been the fact that the B’s have been shutout at evenstrength through three games, two of which included nearly full overtime periods.
A greasy goal would hit the spot for the B’s. And while those types of tallies can look lucky, they are usually the result of some heavy grunt work in front by the bigger rigs in the lineup. That has been, and will continue to be the focus, said Charlie Coyle.
“Is it taking some time? Yeah, it is a little bit. But we have to bring that focus to make sure we did that. It’s dirty work, but it’s necessary work,” said Coyle. “There’s a lot of us who have to do that, especially the bigger bodies in front, to get there and not necessary tip one in off the bat, but create some havoc. You ask our D-men and when there are guys in front, you’re trying to push them around and all of a sudden a rebound comes out and the other guys comes in and puts it in. It’s necessary work we have to do and make sure were working in front. That will create more havoc in front, more rebounds and we’ll eventually put one in. It usually starts with a dirty one and the flood gates will open from there.”
That’s the hope, anyway. And whenever it happens, even the canned crowd cheers will be a welcome sound.
Grzelcyk back
Grzelcyk went out on the ice before practice to test whatever was ailing him and, after the Zambonis cleared the sheet, he returned for practice and took his regular spot with Brandon Carlo. It appears a bullet was dodged.
“I think it could have been a lot worse. Just a little nick from something I’ve had in the past, but I’m feeling good right now. I wanted to test it before practice, but I’m feeling close to 100%,” said Grzelcyk. “I haven’t really talked to the trainers, but practice went really well, no hiccups, and I want to do everything I can to make sure I’m in the position to be in the lineup. I’m sure it won’t be an issue.”
Kase on mend
Ondrej Kase remained off the ice and Cassidy ruled him out for tonight’s game. The only information Cassidy could give beyond that was that it was an “upper body” injury.
“I don’t know how long it will be, to be honest with you,” said Cassidy.
Whether or not Kase suffered a concussion — he has a history — remains to be seen, but he did seem woozy on the bench after the Miles Wood hit. And the lack of a timeline for it is consistent with such issues.
Al dente Pasta
Pastrnak, decked out in a red no-contact jersey, participated in practice for the first time since undergoing offseason hip surgery. Cassidy said that Pastrnak could join the team as a full participant next week and at that point he could have a target date. The coach did say that he remains ahead of the original target of mid-February.
Rask ‘dialed in’
Grzelcyk on Tuukka Rask after the criticism he took from some corners after he left the bubble: “He’s so dialed in, especially this year. I think he wants to prove people wrong. I’m sure he’s aware of things being said about him, but he’s off to a great start and we just want to give him more run support and get him some more wins here.”