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BOSTON BRUINS QUOTES Practice Day Friday, August 21, 2020 BOSTON BRUINS HEAD COACH BRUCE CASSIDY On combatting bubble fatigue… I don't know. Personally, the coaching staff, you know we're doing fine. You adapt, make the best of it. There's some activities to do here around the hotel, pickleball, there's a golf simulator, there's at least two or three gym areas, tennis courts, get out and walk around BMO field. I think you got to try to take advantage of what's available to you and then go from there and try to find your routine. I think it will become easier when we have the final kind of four teams here from the East. You'll probably play on every second night I assume around 7:00 or 8:00, something you're used to. Practice times will probably be a little bit more consistent because there's less teams here so that should help everybody, assuming you play every second day once we do start. And then it's very easy to get back to your playoff mindset. In the meantime, I think our guys are doing OK. They like each other, they enjoy each other’s company. Good practice today, guys were lively, they had a day off yesterday. And then we'll see going forward you know who our opponent is or are we playing Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. We don't have that information out which is a little bit odd sometimes to try to get out in front of it, but it is what it is, and you make the best of it. On Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and Sean Kuraly… All maintenance days. Should be available tomorrow to practice. No other injuries or setbacks for us so should be a full group tomorrow morning. On Ondrej Kase helping David Krejci’s game… Well that's one area that he can play the one-timer game with obviously a little easier. I think it's always been, I mean I remember watching David years ago I think he's playing with Blake Wheeler and I want to say Michael Ryder, two righties, and they sure had chemistry, so I think it's a little bit easier for him to play with a righty. He’s got Ondrej now, they're forming some chemistry, they’ve had good consistency throughout the Carolina series and hopefully it continues to grow. Only he can answer that, but like I said I think it helps him. The way he plays all over the ice, I know he’s a right shot so he's going to first look to his left, forehand to forehand pass through neutral zone but I think in the o-zone he likes to find those soft areas and usually if you're looking for, he ends up on his backhand and he's looking for that little forehand sauce pass into the middle of the ice to a righty for the one-timer so once they find that part of their game, Ondrej, I think he'll see a few good bucks in that area. I know when he plays with Pasta it certainly exists. So again I think that's the biggest difference for him or the biggest advantage is the o-zone when he likes to get on his offside and feed guys for one-timers. On the leadership group in the bubble… Well it's interesting because for them you know they are obviously the guys that everyone goes to about pretty much anything right. So now we get here and as I said I think before we got here the younger guys can also pull along the older guys because those older guys in this circumstance, you know they have the children and that's what you probably miss the most here, your activities with your kids and whatever your daily routine is at night, those little things. So for them I imagine they have some tough evenings, but they’re still here every day, they're working, they’re setting the example for everybody, so again can't say enough about them. And that's where you hope the young guys’ energy will rub off on those guys if they have a bad day where they missed family at home. So I think we found a good balance there. Now Pasta is in, he always brings some of that. Jake is typically in a good mood every day at the rink. So you know those are good balancing things for the younger guys to bring. But again they've handled like true pros that they are, Zee, Bergy, I’ll put Marchy in that boat and Krech has young ones too, so they've done a really good job of sort of blocking that part out as best you can and focusing on the task at hand when you need to and then relaying that message to the younger guys as well to know what we're here to play for which is the Stanley Cup. And we intend to be here for the long haul, so good for those guys. On Nick Ritchie getting back into the lineup… Well first let’s get our opponent. We typically will want to play our best lineup but we also want to keep in mind who are we playing. Carolina had defensemen that like to get up the ice, you saw that with their goal totals, I think they got whatever it was four, five goals from their D-men. And so they would try to beat you up the ice after a turnover, so we needed a little more speed in the lineup to counter that, and that's where Björk and Jack got a look, Kuraly moved up. But if it's Tampa with bigger guys like Hedman and Sergachev and Bogosian back there, certainly they'll get up the ice, not so much Bogosian, but you know Cernak’s a big guy, you might need bigger bodies in the offensive zone to get inside against that group. I thought we were able to get inside against Carolina’s D, I don't know if that will be the case against Tampa. The Islanders play more of a stifling game, so that's where Nick could become an asset for us. Still got to keep this pace up, still got to be good on o-zone puck possession, but might become a better option. So let's see who our opponent is. I'm assuming it's going to be one of those, obviously one of those two teams. If it's Tampa you're probably going to see Nick. They've got some bigger heavier forwards as well that he could match up well against too, so just a better overall matchup for him. He’ll probably play with Coyle, and then we’d look at the right side who’s the best fit, is it a Björk, is it Jack. We tried Kuraly back over there, we tried that in training camp, didn't work out that well for us, they didn't find the chemistry, so probably not a route we’d go unless we were forced to. On Charlie McAvoy’s defensive responsibilities… Well we respect what Charlie brings in terms of his ability to make plays kind of just as he sees them right. The hit he was involved in the offense, recovered out, actually ended up at the left point because I think Griz had taken his spot and just saw an opportunity to step into a player. Good clean hit, kind of looked like he might go the hip check route and sort of turned and got him with the shoulder. And that's not taught by us, that's Charlie’s instincts, freedom to step up in a play and make a good decision. You don't want to be pinching up there and missing the puck and the man and give up an odd-man rush when that happens. And you know we've done that, we’re guilty of that at times, but we try to let our D get up and be involved if they’re, we call it on time, be on time, so Charlie clearly was. As for the structure, his responsibilities, typically he’s playing against a good line every night. We ask every one of our guys to play our layered defense, to get in the shooting lane, block a shot when it's your turn to block a shot. He's willing to do that. He's got more responsibility on the penalty kill. But at the end of the day he is one guy that we’ll allow to stray a little bit when it comes to systems simply because he can excel with just his vision and his hockey IQ and his timing. He's been real good at that and we don't want to stifle that. We try to coach him up a little more on the offensive side of things on the power play, not be as freelancing simply because there's four other guys that are on the ice that are going to have to read off him and sometimes that can be difficult, so we like to have structure first on the power play and then make your plays off puck recovery when the other team is kind of running around. So, Charlie is certainly excellent at that. But all in all, we’ve never had any problems with Charlie really having to contain him or play our way.

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