Zdeno Chara clearly is injured, but the captain is going to play through it to help the Boston Bruins in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final against the St. Louis Blues Thursday night (8 p.m. ET; NBC; live stream).
He reportedly suffered a broken jaw when Brayden Schenn‘s shot struck him in the face during Game 4 on Monday. He returned to the bench, but was forced to sit out for the third period. It seems that’s the extent of the time he’ll miss though. Not only is he going to dress for Game 5, but he’s one of Boston’s starters.
Zdeno Chara is introduced to a thunderous applause. pic.twitter.com/QMOsk9IdmB
— NBC Sports Hockey (@NBCSportsHockey) June 7, 2019
The fact that he’s willing to soldier through it is huge for Boston, which is already dealing with the absence of defenseman Matt Grzelcyk. He hasn’t played since being hit from behind by Oskar Sundqvist and while Grzelcyk was listed as a game-time decision on Thursday, he ultimately wasn’t out with his teammates for the pregame warmups. The silver lining there is that he did skate Thursday morning without the non-contact jersey he had previously donned.
Boston will also dress Steven Kampfer tonight, giving them seven defensemen. That might be a move to put a little less pressure on Chara and to that end, it will be interesting to see how much time each blueliner gets tonight.
To make room in the lineup, former Blues captain David Backes will not play for Boston against his old team. Backes has averaged just 9:44 minutes per game in the 2019 playoffs and was on the ice for 9:09 minutes in Game 4.
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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.