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BRIGHTON, Mass – Torey Krug is still likely more than a week from returning from his fractured jaw, but the puck-moving D-man joined with the rest of the team for his first practice since getting hurt early in the preseason.
Krug was skating in Tuesday’s practice at Warrior Ice Arena with a no-contact jersey, and jumping in intermittently with the rest of the defense corps after skating on his own for the last couple of days. Krug is wearing a big plastic protective piece to his helmet that wraps around his jaw rather than a full face cage or bubble, and will have to wear that plastic protective piece in NHL game action once he returns from the injury.
Krug is expected to miss roughly the first three games of the season based on the three week timetable given when he suffered the injury on Sept 19, but there hasn’t been any update to his timetable since then.
Otherwise, the Bruins were in full force for a practice just a couple of days before opening day with the full group of players expected to be with the team to start the season minus a body or two. One word of caution, though, for Patrice Bergeron after the star center had to leave practice midway through after missing Monday’s session with a maintenance day. Bruce Cassidy confirmed following practice that Bergeron is dealing with a lower body injury, and is "day-to-day" with the hope that it's not going to impact his readiness for Thursday night's opener vs. the Nashville Predators.
Bergeron being unable to finish practice after a couple of days off the ice (Sunday and Monday) isn’t an encouraging sign after the franchise center suffered a chronic injury at the end of the preseason one year ago. Ryan Spooner finished the practice centering Brad Marchand and Anders Bjork, but here’s what the forward line combos and defense pairings looked like prior to Bergeron’s exit:
Marchand-Bergeron-Bjork
DeBrusk-Krejci-Pastrnak
Kuraly/Beleskey-Spooner-Backes
Schaller-Nash-Acciari
Vatrano
Chara-Carlo
Miller-McAvoy
Grzlecyk-McQuaid
O’Gara-Postma
Rask
Khudobin