DeBrusk Out, Rask ‘Not Feeling 100 Percent’ For Boston Bruins

Any hope for the Boston Bruins achieving a fully healthy lineup for this weekend would appear to be far-fetched.

Bruins left winger Jake DeBrusk (lower body) has been ruled out for Thursday night’s game against the Pittsburgh Penguins, and Tuukka Rask’s health is in some question after he missed Wednesday’s practice at Warrior Ice Arena. DeBrusk was knocked out in the first period of Tuesday night’s 3-2 overtime win shortly after absorbing a Sidney Crosby hip check and Rask appeared to tweak something in his lower body in the third period on Pittsburgh’s first goal of the game.

Tuukka Rask is hurting following this sequence that leads to Zucker’s goal.

However, he’s staying in the game. pic.twitter.com/Ye2rXM7wVq

— Conor Ryan (@ConorRyan_93) January 27, 2021

Rask remained in net, and made a couple of big saves in overtime, for the remainder of the victory and will be sitting in favor of backup Jaroslav Halak in Thursday’s rematch against the Penguins.

“DeBrusk, lower body injury. He will not play [on Thursday] and we’ll go from there. We’ll list him as day-to-day,” said Boston Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy. “Tuukka was given a day off. Jaro was going to play tomorrow anyway. Obviously after the first goal he was in a little bit of discomfort but was able to finish the game.

“He’s not feeling 100 percent today, so we kept him off the ice. We’ll go with Jaro [on Thursday] and then hopefully Tuukka is ready for Saturday in Washington.”

With David Pastrnak not expected to be ready until this weekend at the earliest, the Bruins will have to dig deeper into their forward depth for at least one game. They could pluck Greg McKegg or Par Lindholm off the taxi squad, or potentially slide Connor Clifton up into a forward spot for a game to get them over until Pastrnak is ready to go.

Here are the Bruins line combos and D-pairings from Wednesday’s practice with Ondrej Kase, Jake DeBrusk and Tuukka Rask all missing from the action:

Marchand-Bergeron-Smith

Ritchie-Krejci-Coyle

Bjork-Kuraly-Wagner

Frederic-Lindholm-Studnicka

McKegg-Pastrnak

Lauzon-McAvoy

Grzelcyk-Carlo

Zboril-Miller

Moore-Clifton

Vaakanainen

Halak

Booth