Veteran Bruins defenseman John-Michael Liles was forced to exit Sunday afternoon’s matinee against the Tampa Bay Lightning with an upper-body injury. The team announced that he would not return to the game.
The injury came on a nasty face-first spill into the end boards during his fourth shift of the game. The 35-year-old Liles tripped over Ben Bishop’s stick while making a b-line to the puck behind the Tampa net midway through the first period, and collided into Austin Czarnik before his momentum smacked him into the end boards.
Liles was down for long minutes with little movement aside from flailing arms and legs, and looked very shaky as he had to helped off the ice back to the dressing room by his teammates amid eerie silence from concerned B’s fans at TD Garden.
The Bruins have gone the majority of the game with five defensemen for the second time within a week. Liles has five assists and a minus-2 rating in 21 games for the Bruins this season, and had been in a pretty effective pairing with rookie Brandon Carlo since Boston had lost Zdeno Chara to injury earlier this week.