NHL

BOSTON – Back on February 23, 2021, the weather bureau issued warnings for the Northern Plains, there was a report on the decline on exports and soybean futures rose on news of the virus woes in Brazil. That Tuesday evening, the Buffalo Sabres defeated the Devils, 4-1, in New Jersey. It was their last win.

The Buffalo Sabres lost their 17th consecutive game Saturday, twice blowing a single goal lead before Boston’s Craig Smith scored with 3:50 left to snap a third-period tie and give the Bruins a 3-2 victory. The fact that the Sabres have not won since Feb. 23, ties the 18th longest losing streak in NHL history. It was just the fifth time during that span that the Sabres have managed to lose by only one goal.

The Sabres have been without former Boston U star Jack Eichel since early March and had been forced to use a fourth-string goalie, Dustin Tokarski before Linus Ullmark returned tonight. Kyle Okposo had missed three games with an injury.

The Bruins play New Jersey today at TD Garden.

BOSTON – After a two-game postponement and COVID-19+ pause in their season, the Boston Bruins will return to their home ice at TD Garden with a limited number of fans in the stands to watch the game in-person. The game tonight against the New York Islanders will be the first major sports game with fans in the stands since the global pandemic shutdown the world and the sports industry last March.

The Bruins cancelled a routine morning skate today. The club did practice yesterday after a week of being sidelined and that practice came after David Krejci, David Pastrnak and Craig Smith were cleared after spending five days in the NHL protocol.

Bruins Jake DeBrusk and Sean Kuraly remained on the list for a seventh consecutive day.

Game time is 7pm EDT on NESN.

 

BOSTON – The Boston Bruins will return from an in-season, COVID-19 pause when they play the New York Islanders Thursday night at TD Garden after having two games postponed this past week. Boston has a seven-game home stand awaiting their return to action, ranging from March 25 to April 5.

With the lack of practice and access to team facilities and media sessions, Boston General Manager Don Sweeney met with the Boston-area press via video conference call.

“Our apologies that we’ve been a little off the radar for the last couple of days,” said Sweeney.  “You can imagine in conjunction with the protocols and medical advice, we have not returned to the facilities … that’s just adhering to all the medical advice and protocols of the National Hockey League.

“But I want to make ourselves available to answer any questions as we continue to gain knowledge and move forward over the next couple of days with the hope of returning to a practice environment at some point in time on Wednesday, but we have some hurdles to cross before we can get there,” he added.

“Subsequent testing here over the next couple of days may determine who’s available to us. We do believe that we’ll have a couple of players that will be unavailable, and then the rest of the test results will determine who is available to participate on Thursday night if we’re able to do so,” said Sweeney.

“Testing protocols will determine if we get back at full capacity, or what capacity we get to either Wednesday or Thursday. Really most of the time, it revolves around testing and the league has done a fabulous job of trying to add secondary layers of point-of-care on game days and such, and even in our case on game days or on other teams’ cases. So that’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to continue to follow medical advice and cross our fingers to a large degree that everybody remains negative, and the people that have to continue to test, and hopefully return with a full group.”

The question that remains to be answered and will play-out when the Bruins return to the ice absent of recent practice and NHL game-level conditioning, is whether there will be a setback, mentally and physically.

“Well, I think there’s mental fatigue involved in a lot of these things. You’ve got a lot of people that are making decisions for you and putting forth their best medical advice. Even whether or not you’re playing that game on Thursday night, you’re not in a normal routine of preparing, you’re not at the rink on Friday. You’re waiting until a certain period of time when test results come back before you’re able to go to the rink as a group. It’s challenging on the players, it’s challenging on the coaching staff. For all teams involved, not just for our team.”

Sweeney and veteran players have taken the role to keep constant communication open to the players.

“Yeah, we try to communicate as effectively as possible, shooting out updates. Certainly Bergy [Patrice Bergeron] does a really good job of connecting with the players when we do have updates. We’ve been in a holding pattern, they know that. They know the quarantine that they’re facing and the responsibilities each individual has before we’re going to be able to get up and running again. They’re going to adhere to it.

“And we’re going to get back and hopefully move forward and not have any more setbacks from the standpoint of games being cancelled.”