WickedBruinsFan's Blog

If there's one good thing you can take away from the Bruins not advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals (yes, I'm trying to take a positive out of this whole experience) is the players can get their surgeries done sooner.

The Bruins are having their annual "break-up" day at the TDBanknorth Garden today. The day is consisted of gathering stuff from their lockers, maybe grabbing some memorabilia from teammates and disclosing all of the injuries that players had through the playoffs.

The first to be revealed was Mark Recchi just after the series ended. Recchi had kidney stones early in the second round series and had surgery to remove them before Game 7. He was also playing with a rib injury.

The most concerning are David Krejci needing hip surgery and Phil Kessel needing shoulder surgery. Kessel injured his shoulder in a game against Columbus in March. He has a torn rotator cuff and torn labrum. Nothing really has been mentioned about Krejci's injury other than it'll take 4-6 months to recover from. Both Krejci and Kessel will not be ready in time for training camp.

Andrew Ference will also be going to the operating room. Ference needs groin and hernia surgery. He suffered a groin tear against the Rangers in April. The groin received more damage from a hit by Scott Walker in Game 3, and Ference also suffered some pelvic damage.

Last but not least (for now) is Chuck Kobasew who broke two ribs in Game 1 against the Hurricanes after being cross-checked.

It's not surprising there were some Bruins who were injured. It happens every season, especially during the playoffs. I'm sure there are other players who had bumps and bruises throughout the playoffs that aren't important anymore.

So even if the Bruins made it to the next round to play Pittsburgh, it might not have been worth it (health-wise) in the long run. But it would have been one hell of a ride.

Addition: Marc Savard had a knee injury, obviously, that he suffered in a road game in Carolina. During the regular season, Savard would have missed two weeks with the knee sprain. Milan Lucic had a toe ailment. Zdeno Chara played through shoulder, knee and groin injuries.

And we can't overlook losing Matt Hunwick in the first round with the spleen surgery.