Pasta is back on the menu for the Bruins. Star winger David Pastrnak got the final clearance he needed Saturday morning and will make his season debut Saturday night against the Capitals.
The reigning Rocket Richard Trophy winner underwent a right hip arthroscopy and labral repair in September and was originally given a five-month timetable for his return, which would have been mid-February. He had been ahead of schedule for a while, though, and will now make his return two weeks earlier than initially anticipated.
Pastrnak has been practicing for the better part of two weeks, and has been taking contact all this week. He said Friday that he felt "great" and "100 percent" and added that he was skating pain-free for the first time in a while.
He will go back to his usual spot alongside Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand on the Bruins' top line. The Bruins will be without several other forwards, though, as Jake DeBrusk and Ondrej Kase remain out and will now be joined by Jack Studnicka, who got banged up Thursday night and will also miss Saturday's game.
Boston is expected to call up Karson Kuhlman before the game, and he will start the game playing with David Krejci and Nick Ritchie, as Cassidy is opting to keep all his other lines intact.
Matt Grzelcyk is also out on defense after suffering another lower-body injury Thursday night. Connor Clifton will once enter the lineup in his place.
The Bruins are expected to go with these lines:
Brad Marchand - Patrice Bergeron - David Pastrnak
Nick Ritchie - David Krejci - Karson Kuhlman
Trent Frederic - Charlie Coyle - Craig Smith
Anders Bjork - Sean Kuraly - Chris Wagner
Jeremy Lauzon - Charlie McAvoy
Connor Clifton - Brandon Carlo
Jakub Zboril - Kevan Miller
Tuukka Rask
Jaroslav Halak
Pastrnak will also reclaim his spot on the top power-play unit, with Krejci bumping down to the second unit. That will mean a top unit Saturday night of McAvoy, Pastrnak, Bergeron, Marchand and Ritchie, and a second unit of Zboril, Krejci, Smith and Coyle as the base, and then either a second defenseman or a net-front forward depending on the situation.
On the other side, the Capitals could also be getting the return of their own co-Rocket Richard Trophy winner, as Alex Ovechkin took part in Saturday's morning skate after missing the last four games due to a violation of COVID protocols. While it hasn't yet been 100 percent confirmed that he'll play, it certainly seems to be trending that way.
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While the returns of Pastrnak and potentially Ovechkin are big, the biggest storyline Saturday night will be Zdeno Chara facing his former Bruins teammates for the first time since signing with Washington this offseason.
Patrice Bergeron was as close to Chara as anyone, having played with him and been an alternate captain next to him all 14 seasons Chara was in Boston. Bergeron acknowledged Saturday's game will feel "different," but said it'll be all business once the game begins.
"It's definitely going to be different," Bergeron said. "As you guys all know, I've been very close to Zee for 14 years, and I've learned tremendously from him. We have a special relationship. But that being said, it's the nature of the business, and Zee would tell you the same thing. Once you're on the ice, you have a job to do, and it's about focusing on that. We've been through this before, where we've had some really good friends who have left and played on different teams, and we had to face that change. So I guess we're accustomed to it, but that being said, it is definitely different with a guy like Zee."
Asked if any other former teammates stood out as being weird to play against after they left Boston, Bergeron named a few that came to mind.
"Yeah, I think the guys that you competed for a while with, the guys we won a Cup with," Bergeron said. "A guy like Andrew Ference, when we played him in Edmonton, he was someone we were really close with. Brad Boyes earlier in my career was a guy I was really good friends with, and to see him play with St. Louis was a little odd at first.
"There's a lot of guys I'm missing right now, but definitely Ference is one of them. Johnny Boychuk. A lot of guys from 2011, I felt like we had a pretty strong bond and to see them go was hard. But as I said, it's the nature of the game and the business, and we all understood it and we're professionals. On the ice, it was just a hockey game and you had to give your best to win."
