Photo taken from NHL.com. 
Photo taken from NHL.com.
The Bruins play the second half of their back-to-back tonight when they face off against the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden. Puck drop is set for 7:00 pm ET, and the game will be broadcast on NESN, NHL Network, and MSG Network. Here’s a look at tonight’s projected lineups.
Boston Bruins:
Marchand-Bergeron-Pastrnak
DeBrusk-Coyle-Ritchie
Bjork-Lindholm-Heinen
Cehlarik-Kuraly-Backes
Chara-McAvoy
Krug-Carlo
Grzelcyk-Clifton
Halak
Rask
Since the Bruins played last night, they did not have a morning skate today, so I had nothing to go off of for lines since things will change. Cassidy said that Nordstrom and Wagner are both out tonight due to injury. Peter Cehlarik will be recalled from Providence, and it also means David Backes will go back in. So, for now, I just placed those two in Nordstrom and Wagner’s spots, and it seems likely that they’ll stay because of the positions they play. But, I may be wrong, and if so I will update this to reflect that if/when I find out differently.
New York Rangers:
Kreider-Zibanejad-Kakko
Panarin-Strome-Buchenvich
Lemieux-Howden-Fast
McKegg-Andersson-Smith
Hajek-Trouba
Staal-Fox
Skjei-DeAngelo
Lundqvist
Georgiev
The Rangers also did not have a morning skate today, so these are the lines from their last game. I would not expect much, if anything, to change, and if so they will most likely be minor changes, and I will update this to reflect them if/when I hear about them.
This is going to be an interesting game for the Bruins. They are coming off of a really physical, emotional, playoff-like game against the Blues last night, and now they have to come and play a game against a team that has struggled so far this season. The mental aspect of it will be tough because of that since the atmosphere and the play of this game will just not be the same. So, they may get off to a sluggish start, but I think they’ll snap out of it and be fine as the game progresses. They should be able to walk out of here with a win if they can do that, as like I said the Rangers are not off to a great start this year (although they did just beat the Atlantic Division leading Sabres the other night). But, if they get off to too slow of a start and/or if they take a while to snap out of it, the Rangers could jump all over them and this may be ugly. However, I don’t think that that will be an issue as the Bruins’ veterans know how to handle this kind of situation and will surely do everything they can to make sure the whole team is ready to go. I’m hoping to actually have a postgame up for this game tonight, as I really wanted to do one for last night’s game but for some reason, WordPress was not working for me up until now and it seems useless to put it up this late.
Hockey Addict 