Boston Bruins’ Grzelcyk Practices, ‘Close To 100 Percent’ Healthy

BOSTON – It looked like Boston Bruins defenseman Matt Grzelcyk might have suffered a significant arm injury in the late moments of Monday’s loss to the Islanders after getting awkwardly tangled up with Jordan Eberle.

Matt Grzelcyk heads to the room after getting tied up with Jordan Eberle. Not good. pic.twitter.com/2ljVDgJONJ

— Conor Ryan (@ConorRyan_93) January 19, 2021

Now it appears that Grzelcyk dodged a bullet as he was able to practice fully with his Boston Bruins teammates during a rare session at TD Garden on Wednesday afternoon. Both Grzelcyk and David Pastrnak (no-contact sweater) took part in the practice that acted as a dress rehearsal of sorts prior to Thursday night’s home opener against the Philadelphia Flyers.

Grzelcyk sounded like he’s going to be ready to go on Thursday night for the home opener against the Flyers, where the B’s are going to absolutely need him.

“It could have been a lot worse. Just a little nick from something I’ve had in the past,” said Grzelcyk. “Wanted to test it at practice, but I’m feeling good now and close to 100 percent. I haven’t talked to the trainers, but I feel really good and there were no hiccups [at practice].”

There was even fake crowd noise bumped pumped into the building as the Bruins players practiced and skated on the ice.

Bruins winger Ondrej Kase was missing from the practice session, so it looks like he’ll miss his second straight game with an upper body injured suffered after a high hit from Miles Wood last weekend. Kase has been placed on injured reserve, per the team’s website, so he’s expected to out through the weekend based on the league’s IR rules where he needs to miss at least three games or a week of play to be placed on the injured list.

Here are the Bruins line combos and defense pairings from Wednesday’s TD Garden practice:

Marchand-Bergeron-DeBrusk

Ritchie-Krejci-Studnicka

Bjork-Coyle-Smith

Frederic-Kuraly-Wagner

Pastrnak

Lauzon-McAvoy

Grzelcyk-Carlo

Zboril-Miller

Moore-Clifton

Rask

Halak

Vladar