Jakub Lauko’s face still looks a bit beat up, but his return to Bruins practice at Warrior Ice Arena on Wednesday was a welcome sight for everyone.
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Lauko joined his teammates on the ice for the first time since taking a skate to the face on Oct. 24 that resulted in a nasty cut near his eye and multiple facial fractures.
Lauko donned a red no-contact jersey, a full cage on his helmet, and a neck guard. The no-contact jersey and cage will be temporary. Lauko said he anticipates wearing the cage for a few more weeks as his face continues to heal. Boston coach Jim Montgomery ruled Lauko out for Thursday’s game against the Islanders, but said no decisions have been made beyond that yet.
The neck guard, however, may be permanent. Lauko said that the combination of his own scare with a skate to the face and Adam Johnson’s death during a game in England from a skate blade to the neck just a few days later led him to decide that it wasn’t worth the risk to play without one any longer.
“After this experience with the eye and after what happened in England, it’s too much of a risk,” Lauko said. “If we can put something on the neck, it’s always better. It’s the most vulnerable spot for us on the body. So, I’m going to start wearing the neck guard and wrist guards, too. Just trying to add a layer of protection to those places that are vulnerable. It’s always better to be ready than sorry. So, I’ll wear the neck guard I think for the rest of my career.”
A number of hockey leagues and organizations around the world have made neck protection mandatory in the wake of Johnson’s death, but the NHL, AHL and USA Hockey have so far not been among them. Some NHL and AHL players, including several Providence Bruins, have started wearing them, though. Lauko will be the first Boston Bruin to do so.
As for his own injury, Lauko said he feels much better now even with some lingering bruising and a blood spot in the corner of his left eye. He said he’s “very grateful” to be able to continue playing, knowing that things could have been a lot worse had the skate not missed the eye itself by mere millimeters.
In fact, in the moments of initial shock right after the injury, Lauko feared that he had lost his eye.
“The first thing that happened was my eye went pitch black,” he said. “So, my first reaction was like, ‘I lost the eye.’ So, I kind of went into panic mode. I was like shaking. It wasn’t a nice situation. Even in the locker room, like the trainers told me it missed the eye, but obviously it was like a shock kind of. It was hard to get through, like a lot of emotion because it’s one of your senses, and I think one of the most important ones.
“So yeah, it was hard. Like after they stitched it together, I’m going to be honest, like I started crying in the trainer’s room because it was a lot of emotion. … I’m very, very grateful that I can be here and that it missed the eye by literally like millimeters.”
Geekie to miss time
Lauko’s return can’t come a moment too soon, because the Bruins have lost yet another forward to injury. Morgan Geekie was not on the ice for Wednesday’s practice, and Montgomery said afterwards that he is “week-to-week” with an upper-body injury.
It’s unclear exactly when Geekie suffered the injury or what it might be. He did hit the boards a little awkwardly on his final shift late in the third period Monday and seemed to slightly hunch over afterwards, but he still finished that shift without appearing to labor too much.
Partly because of Geekie’s absence, Montgomery shuffled up his lines once again Wednesday ahead of Thursday’s game against the Islanders. It appears Danton Heinen will move up from the fourth line to play on a line with Matt Poitras, while Patrick Brown will re-enter the lineup on the fourth line.
Higher in the lineup, Brad Marchand was skating with Pavel Zacha and David Pastrnak on a loaded-up top line on Wednesday. Charlie Coyle had James van Riemsdyk and Trent Frederic on his wings, which is a combination that played well when they were together earlier this season. Jake DeBrusk moved to Poitras’s line.
Milan Lucic has not started skating with the team yet as he recovers from a lower-body injury. He is eligible to return from long-term injured reserve on Nov. 18, but will obviously have to get back on the ice soon if he’s going to be ready by then.
On defense, Derek Forbort (lower body) practiced in full on Wednesday, but Montgomery said he remains questionable for Thursday. Mason Lohrei, Ian Mitchell and Parker Wotherspoon all remain with the team, and all three could be in the lineup once again if Forbort is unable to go.
Here were the Bruins’ lines and pairs at Wednesday’s practice:
Brad Marchand – Pavel Zacha – David Pastrnak
James van Riemsdyk – Charlie Coyle – Trent Frederic
Danton Heinen – Matt Poitras – Jake DeBrusk
Patrick Brown – Johnny Beecher – Oskar Steen
Jakub Lauko (non-contact)
Hampus Lindholm – Ian Mitchell
Mason Lohrei – Brandon Carlo
Parker Wotherspoon – Kevin Shattenkirk
Derek Forbort – Charlie McAvoy
Linus Ullmark
Jeremy Swayman
McAvoy’s suspension upheld on appeal
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announced Wednesday afternoon that he has decided to uphold Charlie McAvoy’s four-game suspension for a hit to the head on Florida Panthers defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson. Bettman heard McAvoy’s appeal directly in a hearing on Tuesday.
As a result, McAvoy will have to serve the fourth and final game of his suspension on Thursday. He will return to the lineup Saturday in Montreal.
The NHL rarely reduces suspensions, and there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of optimism that they would here, but there’s also no real downside to appealing. Bettman is not even required to hear appeals on suspensions of five games or less.
In his ruling, which can be read here, Bettman writes that McAvoy was “respectful and appropriately remorseful for his actions,” but concluded that he could not “excuse actions, such as these, which are wholly avoidable.”
Montgomery explains Lohrei benching
Rookie defenseman Mason Lohrei played just one shift over the final 14 minutes of Monday night’s win over the Stars. While he had scored his first NHL goal earlier in the game, he was also at fault on Dallas’ first goal early in the third, when he got caught flat-footed on an ill-advised pinch at the offensive blue line.
On Wednesday, Montgomery explained why he benched Lohrei and what he wants the 22-year-old to learn from it.
“What we want him to learn is it’s 2-0, we're in control of the game, we've done really well the first four or five minutes of the third, and it's about learning how to manage a game,” he said. “You're on the road playing a good team. You can't take those chances at the offensive blue line. There's no need to. We can wear out the back of the net. We can make them come 200 feet.
“You have time and space, you make plays. We don't want to take anything away from his god-given ability to make plays, because he has that god-given ability, but you have to know when you don't have time. You don't need to force offense. If we're losing 2-0, you might want to hold onto that puck and force something.
“And then I think what goes into the decision-making is, I only think he missed a couple of shifts. We talked to him and it’s, ‘You're gonna go back out there and we need you to be firmer and we need you to be stronger.’ I think it's just part of the learning curve. We don't want to take away from a young man's ability to make plays. Just like Poitras against Florida when there was a turnover against Barkov, you give them a chance to go right back out there. You talk to him about it, but it's a teaching moment. It's not so much a punishment.”
B’s remain committed to goalie rotation
Jeremy Swayman is 6-0-0 and leads the NHL in save percentage (.952) and goals-against average (1.49). On most teams, that would earn a goalie the vast majority of his team’s starts.
The Bruins are not most teams, though. They also have Linus Ullmark, the reigning Vezina Trophy winner. Despite giving up 11 goals over his last three starts, Ullmark also ranks in the top 10 in save percentage (.926) and GAA (2.30) while sporting a 4-1-1 record.
While there could be some temptation to lean on the hotter hand a little more, Montgomery said the Bruins remain committed to a straight rotation for the time being.
“Right now, we're committed to the rotation,” he said. “I think we want to get a significant amount of games under our belt, and both of them are playing really well. [Swayman is] playing great, but if you look at our schedule, we play these two games and then we have that one game in like a five- or six-day span. So, that would be a long time to start going with one guy, because one guy would be sitting there not having game action. But at some point in the season, you might think about giving back-to-back starts to a goaltender.”
That means Ullmark will start Thursday against the Islanders and Swayman will go Saturday in Montreal.
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