It’s a mixture of bad and good news for the Boston Bruins early on in Game 1.
Let’s front-load this with the positive: they’re currently only trailing the Ottawa Senators 1-0 and Colin Miller might be OK.
Update: While Miller returned to the game, he might still be injured after testing out his leg(s). Not ideal.
So we have no Colin Miller on the bench again for the Bruins. Third straight game with a D injury for Boston.
— Amalie Benjamin (@AmalieBenjamin) April 13, 2017
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Otherwise, it gets a little bumpy. The Senators are dominating the play in the second period, and Miller is still someone to watch health-wise after a knee-to-knee hit by Mark Borowiecki. They were already dealing with bad injury news from Wednesday alone, as David Krejci’s upper-body issues kept him from playing in Game 1.
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They also might be dealing with a resurgent Bobby Ryan. The oft-criticized (in some circles) forward has dealt with injuries and inconsistency through much of 2016-17, but he provided this spell-binding goal, so far the only tally between the two teams:
Wow. If Ryan really asserts himself and the Bruins continue to suffer bumps and bruises, this series might not look a lot better for Boston than the regular season, when Ottawa enjoyed a sweep.
The Bruins failed to record a shot on goal in the second period.
— Ottawa Senators (@Senators) April 13, 2017
Can someone in the advanced stat community tell us if that is good?
The first few notes of this post are worth remembering, too, though: it’s early and the score is merely 1-0 as of this writing.