The Boston Bruins Can’t Stop Winning—but No One Gets a Day Off

Had Bergeron performed another skilled sports activities, he may not have suited up for the following recreation, shiner and all. The season is lengthy and preventing by way of accidents generally backfires on groups with title aspirations.

However Bergeron performs hockey, a sport that stands alone in a sports activities panorama that more and more finds groups holding high athletes out of standard season contests—generally sacrificing wins in favor of preserving athletes’ our bodies for the lengthy haul of a playoff run.

This idea of “load administration” gained traction in 2019 when the Toronto Raptors gained the NBA title with Kawhi Leonard regardless of holding him out of the lineup for 22 common season video games, over 1 / 4 of the slate, as he labored his manner again from leg accidents. That helped him put up monster performances in all of Toronto’s 24 playoff video games. 

Professional sports activities are copycat enterprises, and so load administration unfold. It by no means actually caught on in hockey, nevertheless—and this season’s Boston Bruins are an excessive instance of the sport’s resistance to the idea.

This week, Boston grew to become the quickest crew in NHL historical past to achieve 80 standings factors. Their 39-7-5 file and 83 factors heading into this weekend’s All Star break places them seven factors forward of the following closest crew, the Carolina Hurricanes, and on tempo to shatter the NHL single-season wins file of 62, shared by the 1995-96 Detroit Crimson Wings and 2018-19 Tampa Bay Lightning. 

With a mean age of 29 years and 39 days, the Bruins are the NHL’s fifth oldest crew, which suggests extra creaky knees and aching backs. Bergeron, a mainstay of Boston’s high line on the age of 37, can be a major candidate for taking some additional relaxation at times.  

But strategically resting gamers isn’t one thing Boston coach Jim Montgomery is entertaining with three months left within the common season—although it’s laborious to think about a situation through which the Bruins fail to qualify for the playoffs.

“It’s a consideration later within the yr once we’re going again to backs,” he mentioned after a 3-1 win over the New York Rangers final month. “Patrice Bergeron has earned the suitable—with 1,200 video games he is aware of his physique higher than anyone else.”

“We requested him if he was able to go and he mentioned, ‘I’m 100% able to go.’”

Why are NHL groups so reluctant to relaxation gamers the way in which different sports activities do? Coaches have an obligation to subject the perfect crew potential, based on a bylaw within the NHL collective bargaining settlement. But that’s not the rationale why strategic relaxation by no means caught on in hockey—the league workplace seldom polices day by day lineups. Neither is the game’s prevailing “suck it up” mentality.

Hockey is solely a distinct recreation, with surprisingly completely different calls for on its athletes’ our bodies.

For starters, hockey gamers are within the recreation much less, no more, than athletes in another sports activities. Skaters come on for rotating shifts of about 45 seconds at a time. Depth is excessive, so a participant’s complete time on ice is low. Connor McDavid, whose 41 objectives at present lead the NHL, averages simply 22 minutes and 37 seconds per recreation out of a potential 60. Even probably the most sturdy defensemen, who have a tendency to have the ability to deal with longer shifts, aren’t on the ice for rather more: Colorado’s Cale Makar leads the league with simply over 27 minutes per recreation.

That’s a lot shorter than within the NBA, the place high gamers like Luka Doncic and Jayson Tatum common about 37 minutes per recreation, or roughly 78% of all potential minutes. This isn’t to say that hockey gamers get much less drained from contests through the 82-game common season grind, simply that they’ve fewer alternatives than their basketball-playing counterparts to affect the end result on a per-night foundation.

Goalies are the one place in hockey for which groups make use of gentle load administration, partly as a result of they commonly play near 60 minutes per recreation. This usually solely occurs on the finish of the common season, mentioned Tampa Bay Lightning head crew doctor Ira Guttentag.

Guttentag added that the mechanics of hockey and the character of accidents it produces contribute to athletes’ tendency to play damage.

“Hockey isn’t as hectic on the joints. Though hockey is a large collision sport, it’s a variety of gliding as a substitute of leaping and operating,” Guttentag mentioned. Because of this, there are fewer musculoskeletal accidents that require fast relaxation.

In 21 years of working with the Lightning, Guttentag has seen gamers skate by way of dislocated shoulders, damaged bones and toes fractured whereas blocking slap photographs touring in extra of 100 mph. Skating on a damaged foot isn’t as insane because it sounds, Guttentag mentioned, as a result of the inflexible materials of hockey footwear can act as a type of forged—as long as gamers can squeeze their swollen toes into their skates.

Eric McCarty, crew doctor for the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche, mentioned that he commonly consults with the teaching employees and athletic trainers about whether or not a participant might return to motion with out irreparably harming themselves following an damage. More often than not, besides in cases when the participant has suffered a concussion, getting again on the ice isn’t off the desk.

Resting a skater could make their legs brisker come the postseason, however it could additionally come on the detriment of crew chemistry. Except for discovering a goalie, crucial personnel resolution in hockey is assembling traces. Defensemen work in pairs, forwards work in trios—a middle flanked by left and proper wings. How these threesomes work together determines the standard and amount of goal-scoring alternatives a crew can create. 

“We wish to play video games and be in these conditions collectively,” Bruins defenseman Connor Clifton mentioned.

It isn’t unusual for coaches to combine up these groupings all through the season, however as soon as a line is clicking there may be little cause to mess with it. Boston has famously had the “Perfection Line,” made up of Bergeron, David Pastrnak and Marchand, for the higher a part of the final decade. This yr, Montgomery has shuffled the lineup to create the “Czech Line,” the place Patrnak joins countrymen David Krejci and Pavel Zacha.

“The communication is clearly manner simpler,” Pastrnak mentioned of talking his native tongue along with his linemates. “Plus, the opposite crew doesn’t perceive.”

Write to Laine Higgins at laine.higgins@wsj.com