Bruins at Senators
The Boston Bruins are battling injury problems and a mini-scoring drought as they prepare to face the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday night in the finale of a four-game trip through Canada. The Bruins have managed five goals while going 0-1-2 on the first three legs of their journey and could be without as many as four regulars when they take on the surging Senators.
“It’s just frustrating,” Boston forward David Pastrnak told reporters after a 2-1 overtime loss at Vancouver on Saturday. “Definitely, it (hasn’t gone) the way we wanted on this trip but we lost back-to-back in overtime, and that can go either way.” Torey Krug (ankle) is still not ready for his season debut, fellow defensemen Kevan Miller (hand) and Charlie McAvoy (undisclosed) were sent back to Boston for observation and power forward David Backes (undisclosed) was a late scratch Saturday for the Bruins. Ottawa, which dropped a 6-3 decision at Boston on Oct. 8 and has lost five in a row to the Bruins overall, are winners of three straight after Mark Stone’s overtime tally beat Montreal 4-3 on Saturday. “I’ll be honest with you, I was getting pretty tired at the end of the game,” Stone told reporters after scoring two goals to pull within one of 100 in his career. “I had one chance to maybe try and finish it and I took it.”
TV: 7:30 p.m. ET, NESN (Boston), RDS1, TSN5 (Montreal)
ABOUT THE BRUINS (4-2-2): With three defensemen out of the lineup, 19-year-old rookie Urho Vaakanainen made his NHL debut Saturday and recorded a shot while registering a minus-1 rating in 12:26 of ice time. Coach Bruce Cassidy broke up the top line of Patrice Bergeron (13 points), Brad Marchand (12) and Pastrnak (11, including eight goals) against Vancouver before reuniting the talented trio in the third period. “I didn’t think we manufactured anything in the first period of note, so shake them up a little bit,” Cassidy told reporters. “It was just trying to generate a little offense. I thought we were a little stagnant.”
ABOUT THE SENATORS (4-2-1): Center Matt Duchene notched his first goal of the season Saturday, has strung together three straight multi-point contests and told reporters, “It’s nice to get it out of the way. Now it’s time to get more.” Duchene has eight points, one behind defenseman Thomas Chabot and center Chris Tierney for the team lead while Stone and blue liner Maxime Lajoie top the Senators with four goals each. Ryan Dzingel returned to the lineup Saturday after missing two games with a lower-body injury and fellow forward Alex Formenton (concussion) could return after sitting out the last three.
OVERTIME
1. Tierney is the fourth Ottawa player to post at least a point in the first seven games of a season, joining Alexandre Daigle, Dany Heatley and Filip Kuba.
2. Boston backup Jaroslav Halak (2-0-2, 1.74 goals-against, .933 save percentage) has outplayed No. 1 G Tuukka Rask (2-2-0, 4.08, .875) thus far.
3. Senators D Cody Ceci (upper body) reportedly skated in a regular jersey at practice and could return after missing the last three games.