Pavel Zacha\u2019s Olympic dream ended before it began.<\/p>\n
The Bruins\u2019 center had to be dropped from the Czechia Olympic team roster because of the upper body injury he suffered in the January 29 game against the Philadelphia Flyers. Zacha had held out hope that he would be able to play in the Milan-Cortina Games but on Saturday he had to be replaced on the roster by Filip Chlapik of the Czech Extraliaga. The loss of Zacha, who was one of the first group of players named to the roster, puts a dent into Czechia\u2019s medal hopes.<\/p>\n
The question now is how long will Zacha be sidelined.<\/p>\n
The Bruins\u2019 next game is a big one on Feb. 26 at TD Garden against the Columbus Blue Jackets, who are four points behind the B\u2019s for the second wild card. The games then come fast and furious. They have 16 games in 29 days in March. A healthy Zacha will be vital for the B\u2019s to secure a playoff spot. Zacha has 15-22-37 totals while centering a line with Casey Mittelstadt and Viktor Arvidsson, which has drawn the toughest defensive assignments on most nights.<\/p>\n
The timing of the injury has to be particularly heartbreaking for Zacha, who has been one of the B\u2019s most durable players in his three plus seasons here. Before this season, he played 242 of 246 games. This season, he\u2019s played in 54 of 57 games.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a couple of B\u2019s players were were visible already at the Games. Zacha\u2019s countryman David Pastrnak was a flag bearer for Czechia at the opening ceremonies.<\/p>\n
And Team USA\u2019s Charlie McAvoy sent out a cheeky (literally and figuratively) post on X. One of half of the post was the slow motion video of Florida Panther Sandis Vilmanis\u2019 flying elbow to the head of the Bruins defenseman side-by-side with the end result of it, which was a picture of McAvoy\u2019s surgically repaired jaw severely swollen.<\/p>\n
That was apparently McAvoy\u2019s comment on how he felt about the decision to give Vilmanis just a two-minute penalty (the B\u2019s wound up shorthanded after a roughing penalty and a bench minor in response to the hit) and the Department of Player Safety\u2019s decision not to give any supplemental discipline to Vilmanis.<\/p>\n
Vilmanis did not play for the rest of the game after the first-period hit. The Panthers announced he did not play because of an upper body injury, but he was back in the lineup the next night in Tampa.<\/p>\n
Ironically, Team USA\u2019s first game is on Feb. 12 against Vilmanis\u2019 Latvian team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pavel Zacha\u2019s Olympic dream ended before it began. The Bruins\u2019 center had to be dropped from the Czechia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,5132,530,2154,5,4,7610,422,2787],"class_list":{"0":"post-450684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-bruins","8":"tag-boston","9":"tag-boston-bruins","10":"tag-bostonbruins","11":"tag-bruins","12":"tag-charlie-mcavoy","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-pavel-zacha","16":"tag-usa-hockey","17":"tag-winter-olympics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116031577413101692","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}