Seven more Bruins were unfit to participate today, bringing the total to nine

Today in “UNFIT NEWS...”

The Bruins had another day of practice today, and were playing with a lighter squad than usual: seven additional players were held out of practice today due to being “unfit to participate.”

Yes, seven.

Tuukka Rask, Nick Ritchie, Chris Wagner, Torey Krug, Charlie Coyle, David Krejci, and Sean Kuraly were all absent today, joining David Pastrnak and Ondrej Kase to create a pretty decent UNFIT lineup.

Lest we think the players had a tweak or a strain of some kind, Bruce Cassidy offered clarity that actually only added to the mystery.

From the Bruins’ website:

“We had no injuries to speak of,” said Cassidy. “Unfit to play - the league has asked us to continue along that line for the respect of the privacy of the players. That’s what we’ll do…there’s always different reasons. There’s the quarantine rules, there’s waiting on test results, there’s a number of different things that factor into this. It doesn’t automatically assume that we have a positive test.”

Well that settles that!

Given that Cassidy explicitly said none of the guys was injured, he essentially confirmed that the absences are COVID-related - whether it’s quarantine, waiting for test results, positive tests, etc.

In all honesty, none of this is Cassidy or the team’s fault. They’re just playing by the league’s mystery rules.

The weirdest part about it, however, is that the Bruins’ own website ran information about The Athletic’s story on Pastrnak’s absence, thereby essentially confirming it.

So...the team can share it when other people leak the news, but can’t share the news themselves. Well done, NHL.

Ideally, the absences of the guys above will be more along the lines of Joakim Nordstrom’s absence, as the forward missed practice Friday but was back today.