BRIGHTON, Mass. — The Bruins were back to work with a bigger group on Monday morning at Warrior Ice Arena, but there were still a few notable absences for the Black and Gold.
Both David Pastrnak and Ondrej Kase continue to be absent and “unfit to participate” as they have been throughout Return to Play camp, and fourth line winger Chris Wagner missed his second straight day after not being available on Saturday as well.
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Charlie McAvoy missed his first day of practice as well on Monday after being a regular participant in the first week of camp.
“As you’re starting to see, there are different reasons for that,” said Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy, when asked about the reasons behind the player absences at practice, which are not due to injury . “Tests that don’t come back on time and tests that are inconclusive, so we’re being cautious. At the end of the day we go to work with the guys that have tested negative and off we go.
“We go into every day with two practice plans depending on how many players we have. Typically when players come back in August [training for a new season] they’re playing together 5-on-5 with guys on other teams when they’re working out together, and guys didn’t have that [over the last four months]. I’d like to have everyone on the ice at the same time for continuity purposes, but we’ll adapt.”
The good news: Tuukka Rask, Torey Krug, David Krejci, Nick Ritchie, Sean Kuraly and Charlie Coyle were all back on the ice and skating after they were held off for Saturday’s planned afternoon scrimmage. Cassidy said he believed all of those players, along with Joakim Nordstrom, skated in a small group at Warrior Arena while the other players had the day off from camp.
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Coyle’s agent, Bob Norton, told NBC Sports Boston over the weekend that his client was held out of practice “in an abundance of caution” after an inconclusive test result last week, but that he had since tested negative.
The Bruins did some scrimmage work and some conditioning work on Monday with John Moore and Ritchie scoring goals during the game action. Cassidy did some mixing and matching with the lines and D-pairings throughout the scrimmage while doing things on the fly as players pop in and out of the practice group.
Here are the line combos and D-pairings with Anders Bjork and Karson Kuhlman continuing to fill the top-6 right wing spots vacated by Pastrnak and Kase:
FORWARD LINES
| Brad Marchand | Patrice Bergeron | Anders Bjork |
| Jake DeBrusk | David Krejci | Karson Kuhlman |
| Sean Kuraly | Charlie Coyle | Nick Ritchie |
| Joakim Nordstrom | Par Lindholm | Zach Senyshyn |
| Trent Frederic | Jack Studnicka | Paul Carey |
DEFENSIVE PAIRINGS
| Zdeno Chara | Jakub Zboril |
| Torey Krug | Brandon Carlo |
| Matt Grzelcyk | Jeremy Lauzon |
| John Moore | Connor Clifton |
| Urho Vaakanainen |
GOALTENDERS
| Tuukka Rask |
| Jaroslav Halak |
| Dan Vladar |
| Maxime Lagace |
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