In today’s edition of Boston Bruins’ News & Rumors, we take a look at the NHL’s return to play schedule as it pertains to the Bruins, some new faces who showed up to voluntary practice at Warrior Ice Arena for the first time since the NHL season paused and the possible living situation the Bruins will be dealing with during the resumed season.
Bruins Exhibition & Round Robin Schedule
Hockey is back and the NHL has released the first 10 days worth of schedule for the Stanley Cup Qualifiers as well as the date of each subsequent playoff round.
Included in this released schedule is the following:
The Bruins training camp will open at Warrior Ice Arena on July 13. They’ll travel to Toronto on July 26 and play exhibitions games from July 28 through July 30. From there, they’ll play against the Philadelphia Flyers on Aug. 2, the Tampa Bay Lightning on Aug. 5 and the Washington Capitals on Aug. 8.
Additionally, the First Round of the playoffs will begin on Aug. 11, the Second Round will begin on Aug. 25, the Conference Finals will begin Sept. 8 and the Stanley Cup Final will begin Sept. 22 with the Draft coming on Oct. 9 and 10.
New Faces on the Ice for Bruins Voluntary Workouts
With hockey returning soon, more and more players are returning to their respective teams’ cities and practicing in voluntary workouts. The Bruins are no exception here as multiple players this week made their first appearances at Warrior Ice Arena since the pause.
Included in that list of player is David Krejci, Brandon Carlo, Jake DeBrusk, Jeremy Lauzon, Karson Kuhlman, Connor Clifton, Joakim Nordstrom, Maxime Lagace and Nick Ritchie.
The players listed above skated with Bruins’ skating and skills consultant Kim Brandvold as well as goaltending coach Bob Essensa.
As Conor Ryan would mention, this brings the tally of Bruins’ players spotted via video at Warrior Ice Arena up to 20.
Other Bruins players to have skated during voluntary workouts so far include Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, Zdeno Chara, John Moore, Par Lindholm, Torey Krug, Sean Kuraly, Matt Grzelcyk, Tuukka Rask and Jaroslav Halak.
Bubble Hotel for the Bruins
The NHL seems to have figured out everything they’ve needed to figure out for their return-to-play plan to become official. Part of the barrier that the NHL had to figure out along the way was determining which cities would be used as hub cities for their respective conferences.
While Toronto and Edmonton are the two cities that were reported as the hub cities moving forward, the next question that came to mind was where exactly the teams will be staying in each city.
TSN’s Bob McKenzie would report on Insider Trading that seven teams in the Eastern Conference will stay at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in downtown Toronto for the duration of the postseason while five will be staying in Hotel X which is located on the Canadian National Exhibition grounds.
The Bruins, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals, Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins are the five teams who will be isolated at Hotel X while the remaining Eastern Conference teams will be staying at the Fairmont Royal York.
It’s intriguing that the NHL has decided to group the teams together in such a way and it’ll be even more interesting to see how everything plays out when playoff hockey is actually being played. The atmosphere and emotions that come about from these games are unparalleled. Managing these emotions will be interesting.
We’re in the final stretch leading up to the post-season and it’s time to start getting excited about playoff hockey.