Boston Bruins: Injuries continue to mount; Chara, Bergeron to miss at least four weeks

By: Patrick Donnelly

Since I wrote an article last week going over the injury situation at the time, the Bruins have lost three more key cogs to their roster: Patrice Bergeron, Zdeno Chara, and John Moore.

On Wednesday night in Colorado, Chara collided awkwardly with former Bruin Carl Soderberg, causing an apparent knee injury. It was later announced that Chara would miss the rest of the game, and the team announced on Saturday that Chara sustained a injury to his left MCL and will be reevaluated in four weeks. His exact timetable is four-to-six weeks.

Here is the collision between Soderberg and Chara; keep an eye in Chara’s left knee:

John Moore also sustained an injury in Colorado. the only thing we know about it is that it is a lower-body injury.

Friday night in Dallas, Patrice Bergeron and Radek Faksa got tied up heading towards the boards. Long after Bergeron dumped the puck into Dallas’ zone, Faksa followed through with the hit, driving Bergeron head and shoulder-first into the boards. Bergeron went down holding his head, something you never want to see from a guy with a history of concussions. Here is the replay of the hit:

Bergeron headed straight to the locker room following the hit, but returned a short time later. However, as the game drew to a close, Bergeron did not take many face-offs at all, if any, which could point to a shoulder issue.

In addition to announcing Chara’s injury and return to Boston on Saturday, the Bruins also announced that Bergeron (upper-body injury) and Moore (lower-body) would join Chara in returning to Boston, which is not a good sign at all for those who were hoping they wouldn’t miss significant time.

Darren Dregger and Kathryn Tappen all but confirmed our suspicions about Bergeron’s shoulder on Tuesday morning:

Following the reports on Tuesday morning, the Bruins announced that Bergeron “sustained a rib and sternoclavicular injury” in the game against Dallas and will miss at least four weeks, confirming the reports:

There are some silver linings, though. Kevan Miller is scheduled to make his return on Wednesday night in Detroit and Charlie McAvoy and Urho Vaakanainen seem to be close to their returns as well as they are now questionable for this weekend’s games, per Bruce Cassidy; no word yet on Brandon Carlo.

Also, after being thrust into the limelight two weeks ago, Jeremy Lauzon has taken an elevated role and has looked extremely impressive as he has averaged the second-most ice time among Bruins defensemen over the last three games. Jakob Zboril and Connor Clifton have also looked solid, but they only have a small sample size of two games.

After the announcement of Bergeron’s situation, the Bruins recalled Colby Cave from the Providence Bruins. The P-Bruins’ alternate captain has been red-hot this season, scoring six goals, 12 assists, and 18 points and 15 games this season to go with a +9 rating. The 23-year-old has skated in three NHL games in his career, scoring no points but registering two penalty minutes and two shots on goal.

Without arguably their best player/their best forward, their best shutdown defender, and several other key pieces of their defense, the Bruins are going to have to be close to perfect over the coming days with some tough matchups, including Pittsburgh, Montreal, and Toronto. Tuukka Rask will get the start on Wednesday night at 7:30 in Detroit.

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