Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Top line struggles, Grzelcyk injury stifle Bruins in Game 2

VM5o13dpBNKx
Matt Grzelcyk checked out of the game when his head hit the boards after a check from Oscar Sundqvist. Patrick Sharp and Anson Carter take a look at the hits throughout the physical series.

Boston was able to rally back to take Game 1, but the Bruins couldn’t quite match St. Louis Wednesday night. Tuukka Rask kept Boston in this one, but the Blues out shot them 37-23 and when the game went into overtime, St. Louis was dominate until Carl Gunnarsson scored at 3:51 to end the contest at 3-2.

A big issue for Boston was the top line. The goals the Bruins did get came from Joakim Nordstrom and Charlie Coyle while Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, and David Pastrnak were fairly quiet. The trio each went minus-one and Bergeron was uncharacteristically underwhelming on the draw, winning just 38% of his faceoffs.

Bergeron also logged just 16:16 minutes despite getting 3:52 minutes with the man advantage. To put that in perspective, this is just the second time in the 2019 playoffs that he’s gotten less than 18 minutes of ice time and his average in the playoffs going into this contest was 19:10 minutes. There’s some speculation that he might be dealing with a groin injury, which would be a big blow for Boston.

Marchand might not be 100% either. He may have hurt his hand during Thursday’s scrimmage. After that he missed Sunday’s practice for maintenance and left Monday’s skate before it was finished.

Of course it didn’t help that defenseman Matt Grzelcyk was injured in the first period when he was hit from behind by Oskar Sundqvist. Grzelcyk missed the remainder of the contest and went to the hospital for tests.

Without Grzelcyk, Brandon Carlo logged 22:58 minutes, Zdeno Chara got 25:45 minutes, Torey Krug received 26:00 minutes, and Charlie McAvoy was on the ice for 27:00 minutes. It’s admirable that they performed as well under the circumstances, but it had an effect on how this game went.

Bruins looked gassed in OT after playing without Matt Grzelcyk for most of the game. They miss his puck-moving and skating game when he’s not in there. Going to be a long series

— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) May 30, 2019


The silver lining is that the Bruins have a couple days rest now, which their blueline and star players likely need. Splitting the first two games at home is obviously the scenario they wanted to avoid, but there’s still plenty of time left in this series.

Blues-Bruins Game 3 is Saturday night at 8 p.m. ET from Enterprise Center on NBCSN and the NBC Sports app.

Ryan Dadoun is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @RyanDadoun.