Bruins will seek advice from Patriots on how to handle long layoff

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With an 11-day gap between taking the ice for Game 4 of their Eastern Conference Final sweep of the Hurricanes and Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, it'll be much like another long wait between conference title game and championship that a New England team regularly has to deal with.

See where we're going with this?

Bruins GM Don Sweeney said Saturday he'll be reaching out to a "local team" that has been fairly successful handling long layoffs leading up to their title game.  

Hmmm, who could that be? 

"There's different sports, there's crossovers that we've all kind of identified that we're going to tap into. There's a local team that had time between when they were going to Super Bowls," Sweeney said. "So, we are going to look at different resources that have done it and done it well."

Of Patriots coach Bill Belichick, Sweeney said he doesn't know him well but, "I have a hell of a lot of respect for the man. I think we're going to reach out to their group and see if we can tap into...we look at everybody's assets in that way and hopefully they'll be able to share some information with us."

Sweeney said the Bruins have given players a couple of days off after wrapping up the Eastern Conference Final Thursday night and will practice for a few days and leave decisions on if and when to have scrimmages up to coach Bruce Cassidy. 

On Friday, Cassidy mentioned perhaps scrimmaging one day leading up the Game 1 on May 27 at TD Garden against either the San Jose Sharks or St. Louis Blues, whose Western Conference Final is tied at 2 with Game 5 on Sunday afternoon in San Jose.

"We do have the Black Aces [a group of Providence Bruins], do we scrimmage one day to keep the edge?" Cassidy asked rhetorically. "But even then, if you scrimmage are guys really gonna be physical against one another? They're not."

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