The injury is an extremely unfortunate one because it was a freak accident.
Advertisement
Chris sustained a left femur fracture in the first period of the Bruins/Stars game on Tuesday, November 3 and was transported to Mass General Hospital.
Kelly was chasing the puck along the board in front of the benches along with Dallas center Colton Sceviour, who was behind Kelly.
When the doors to the Bruins dressing room opened after a short Garden practice yesterday, players were busy packing their equipment bags for the trip to Washington and tonight’s game against the Capitals. Picked up from the Ottawa Senators in 2010-11 for the Bruins’ Stanley Cuprun and eventual win, number 23 becomes a free agent at the end of the season.
The Dallas Stars lost last night in Toronto and come in for Part II of a back-to-back against the Bruins, who are one of the two hottest teams in the National Hockey League with the Los Angeles Kings, who have found their secret after also starting slowly.
Talbot will try to bring the same wisdom, leadership, grit, penalty killing and two-way play to the Black and Gold that Kelly has over the past five years.
“We brought in Max Talbot because No. 1 he’s a penalty killer, and No. 2 he’s a great veteran, a great leader and he comes in and plays hard every night”, said Claude Julien. As soon as I saw him go down it didn’t look good and kind of felt like it was going to be a pretty bad injury and unfortunately that’s exactly what it is and I’m definitely thinking of him right now. “Hopefully the pain is not too bad”.
A short time later, almost every player abruptly left the room, leaving just four guys sitting at their spots: Ryan Spooner, Brett Connolly, Jimmy Hayes and Alexander Khokhlachev.
Advertisement
Alex Khokhlachev figures to replace David Pastrnak on David Krejci’s line. “When you lose a guy like that on the PK, it’s tough to fill that void and it just puts more pressure on the rest of us, so it will be tough losing him”. Whichever of the duo does better will likely be the replacement for Kelly.
