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Center David Krejci is now week-to-week with the Boston Bruins after suffering an undisclosed upper body injury in the 3-1 loss to the Senators on Sunday. The injury seemed to come about on a play in which Boston's David Krejci and Ottawa's Bobby Ryan collided with very minimal contact. Krejci bounced off the contact and skated gingerly for a few seconds before leaving the ice. He would not return after that.
Although there was minimal contact, this was not a massive check into the boards or a cheap shot from Ryan, by any means. Watching the replay, the two bumped shoulders and Krejci pulled up in pain. Since we're still not sure what the nature of the injury is, a lot of questions are being asked. What exactly did he injure? Was he already playing injured? Was this an old injury that got re-aggravated? The aspect of the injury that scares me the most is the fact that there was such little contact. We've seen a multitude of ACL tears throughout the NFL this season, and a lot of them seem to come from non-contact injuries. Dion Lewis and Jordy Nelson are a few examples of players who just happened to land on their knee the wrong way and their season is over. Now, I might just be a few steps away from panic mode, but non-contact injuries are rarely a good thing. What does this mean moving forward? The Bruins offense will certainly take a hit with Krejci being out, which mostly likely means we're going to see a lot more ice time for Ryan Spooner. The 23-year-old Center, who has 22 points (8 goals, 14 assists) in 35 games has some big shoes to fill replacing 46. The activation of David Pastrnak for the World Juniors is another positive sign for the Bruins offense, and hopefully his return to the NHL is sooner rather than later. Another player that is going to have to improve his game even more is Tuukka Rask. Torey Krug is also out with an undisclosed injury, adding another huge blow to this already struggling defensive core. Losing Krug means the B's lose a lot of speed in their defense, and as a result, Tuukka will probably start to face more shots per game. As I said before, the non-contact injuries rarely result in a sigh of relief for that player, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens. The Bruins cannot afford to be without Krejci and Krug for an extended period of time, at least if they want to compete for the cup.
By Matt Watts
@BiasedDave
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