As I’m sure we’ve hammered home every day for the past week now: The Boston Bruins hockey club is hurt. And badly.
What we haven’t done, is illustrate just how bad it is using some good ol’ visual aides.
Thankfully, our dear friend Chris tends to come up with great ways to visualize hockey events, news, play, and rosters.
And boy...what a beat up roster they’re currently icing:
So much to unpack here:
- As a whole, they’ve missed over a season’s worth of injuries cumulatively.
- The backup, who hasn’t even played in X amount of games, lost 5 due to undisclosed injuries behind the scenes.
- Every line has been affected in some way. every. single. line.
- To say nothing of the top six, who’ve taken an absolute clobbering with a combined 33 games cumulatively.
- Wondering where all the faceoff wins might go in the middle of a period? Look no further than the Center depth, which had almost 30 cumulative games lost.
- As you can see, the current cap relief for players on IR is almost at 4 million. For comparison, that’s almost like paying for a whole Matt Beleskey to sit around and not do anything....Wait.
- Cumulatively, the total missed ice time of all these players adds up to two weeks plus an added few hours. Total missed time on ice was calculated using the average between this year and last years TOI/gm, then multiplied by games played. Goaltenders skew this somewhat, especially Khudobin since he would have at most started one game in that span
And if you need an even more comprehensive look, here’s the injury list, game by game.
Not. A single. Game. Played. Without. A hurt. Player. Many without Boston’s second or third line center and a lot more coming without their backup for either. That’s insane.
If we look at Bergeron, Krejci, Spooner, and Backes as the Bruins defacto ‘top nine’ centers, with Backes sliding over when one is hurt, the Bruins have played exactly one game with more than two of them, during the game against Vancouver. Krejci would not play in the third period that game due to injury, and Backes was playing on the wing. The past six games (after Backes’s colon surgery) have seen just Bergeron from that list of four centers, and the rest having either Krejci and Spooner, or Bergeron and Backes. Despite being asked to carry the load himself, Bergeron has played out of his mind.
Comparing the Bruins injury woes to the rest of the league doesn’t make it any better. They rank second to the Anaheim Ducks in terms of cap hit lost due to injury, and third overall in terms of just forward injuries, behind Anaheim, and just behind Minnesota. the chart below really highlights:
1. The Ducks are really hurt, and in every phase. Getzlaf, Kesler, Vatanen, Fowler, everyone
2. The Bruins are catching up! Pulling away from the rest of the pack now! #StriveForGreatness
Now, thankfully, some of these injured players are finally starting to come back. Krejci practiced for the first time yesterday without the no contact jersey, and hopes to be back sometime this west coast trip. Acciari’s back from the IR and skating in a depth role again. But it will still be at least December or maybe 2018 before we can see fully what this team is actually supposed to look like under default conditions.
Until then, it’s up to Don Sweeney and Coach Cassidy to balance the lineup for the foreseeable future, and that does indeed involve a lot of the Providence roster.
You can take a look at the original graph made by Chris here.
Some injury info was used from NHL Injury Viz. Its a great website that has injuries broken down by team and player, as well as injury type, with everything filterable, and updated weekly. You can play around on the site here, or browse their twitter feed here. Further explanations can be found here
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