BRIGHTON, MA — All signs continue to point towards Boston Bruins captain Patrice Bergeron returning to the Bruins’ lineup for Game 5 against the Florida Panthers on Wednesday night at TD Garden.
As promised by his general manager Don Sweeney yesterday and head coach Jim Montgomery the night before, Bergeron returned to practice on Tuesday ahead of Game 5 and told reporters after that he doesn’t foresee any issues keeping him from playing in his first game of the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
“Today’s a good day and we’ll see tomorrow how I feel. I’m not anticipating any setbacks so far, so good,” Bergeron replied when asked if he’d join his team in a potential series-clinching game.
Montgomery on the other side took the more conservative and safe approach when asked how many more boxes his captain has to check to be medically cleared to play in Game 5.
“A couple right?” Montgomery replied. “First practice with the team; we’ll see how he is tomorrow morning.”
Tuesday was the first time that Patrice Bergeron has skated with his teammates since he left the game with an upper-body injury after the first period of the Bruins’ 5-4 win over the Canadiens in their regular season finale in Montreal on April 13. Surprisingly he was not skating on a line with his longtime wing man, Brad Marchand. Instead, Montgomery had Tyler Bertuzzi on Bergeron’s left wing and David Pastrnak on his right. After practice though, the Bruins bench boss said not to read too much into Tuesday’s practice lineup.
“It’s just for me to look at lines,” Montgomery said. “I know what ‘Marchy’ and ‘Bergy’ look like. I don’t know if that’s going to be our lines tomorrow.
Veteran Boston Bruins center David Krejci (upper-body), who has missed the last two games, did skate prior to practice but left the ice before his teammates hopped on. Krejci also missed the last six games of the regular season. The 36-year-old pivot had one assist in the first two games of the series.
“Progressing well, but he’s still not available Wednesday,” Montgomery said of Krejci.
Here’s what the forward lines and defensive pairings looked like on Tuesday:
Forwards
Tyler Bertuzzi-Patrice Bergeron-David Pastrnak
Brad Marchand-Charlie Coyle-Nick Foligno
Taylor Hall-Pavel Zacha-Jake DeBrusk
Jakub Lauko–Tomas Nosek–Garnet Hathaway
Defense:
Matt Grzelcyk-Charlie McAvoy
Hampus Lindholm-Brandon Carlo
Derek Forbort-Dmitry Orlov
Goalies:
Linus Ullmark
Jeremy Swayman
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