11/02/2005

Bruins Daily Scoop

By Jeremy Lemoine

Wilmington, MA - The Bruins are searching for a way to win and that was the primary focus of practice Tuesday morning. They remain positive after taking at least one point out of their last six games. Although they seem to have caught the overtime bug, they’re continuing to work hard towards getting that extra point at the end of the game. It will come and they know it.

“From a team standpoint our game plan won’t change, just maybe simplicity,” said Coach Sullivan. “Last night we were much more disciplined and made much better decisions with the puck, because of that I thought we controlled the play. We had tons of scoring chances, our face-offs were strong, and we limited their quality chances. I think those are the right steps we needed to take and last night we were much harder to play against.”

Joe Thornton agreed that it’s frustrating to lose players to injuries and to lose games in overtime, but thought last night was a better all around effort and was happy to come out of New York with a point.

“I think we’ve been playing good,” said the captain. “We’ve had a point in our last six games so we’re staying positive. I think if we can get the two points it may be a big confidence booster and the team can really ride off that and get into a streak. It’s frustrating to lose guys to injuries, but it’s a part of the game and all of us just need to pick up the slack and work extra hard.”

Injury Update

Veteran defenseman Brian Leetch left Tuesday night’s game in the second period with a knee injury against the New York Islanders. The nature of his knee injury is unknown, and he will undergo an MRI Wednesday.

“We’re hopeful that his injury is not going to be something significant,” said Coach Sullivan. “It’s certainly not a day-to-day injury but we don’t know the significance of it. The severity of it we don’t know yet, but we will find out after the MRI.”

Providence Bruins defenseman Milan Jurcina was called up to the team to fill the void until Leetch returns. Jurcina has played five games in Providence thus far and has recorded two assists and six penalties minutes.

Utility player Ian Moran will be undergoing exploratory surgery sometime this week to find out what is wrong with his knee and to repair some cartilage damage. His return is unknown.

Alex Zhamnov is making progress. He is practicing with the team and hopefully will be back in the lineup soon.

Andrew Raycroft took to the ice as well today. Although he did not take any reaction shots, Coach Sullivan said Saturday is a possibility, but that’s optimistic.

Lastly, with Brad Isbister re-injuring his groin in Tuesday’s game with the Islanders, he will not play tomorrow and a player yet to be named will be called up from their AHL affiliate team, the Providence Bruins. Isbister is listed as day-to-day.

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