HITTING THE ICE: ’Return-to-Play Camp’ opens for the Bruins

BOSTON — What happens on the ice through the end of next week is important. There’s not a lot of time for messing around.

What happens away from the ice through the end of next week is even more important. There’s absolutely to place for messing around.

Those were the messages the Bruins took into, and away from, Monday’s entry into Phase 3 of the NHL’s Return-to-Play plan. Commonly (but erroneously, in the opinion of head coach Bruce [...]

BOSTON — What happens on the ice through the end of next week is important. There’s not a lot of time for messing around.

What happens away from the ice through the end of next week is even more important. There’s absolutely to place for messing around.

Those were the messages the Bruins took into, and away from, Monday’s entry into Phase 3 of the NHL’s Return-to-Play plan. Commonly (but erroneously, in the opinion of head coach Bruce Cassidy) referred to as training camp, it kicked off a little less than two weeks of work at Warrior Ice Arena before the B’s depart on June 26 for Toronto, where they’ll join 11 other Eastern Conference teams in a bubble environment to resume a season interrupted in March by the coronavirus pandemic.

That’s the plan, anyway — and the best chance of the plan being executed hinges largely on how well players, once they’ve left the rink, adhere to the hygiene, social distance and outside contact limits that can help prevent transmission of the virus

"The last part of (the pre-camp message) was being responsible away from the rink," Cassidy said, after putting approximately two dozen players through a 45-minute practice.

"It’s not just you. In essence, you could affect up to 40 or 50 guys. So let’s do our best to social distance, wear our masks when we need to be out, and try to limit contact."

"Professionalism is going to be huge," said center Patrice Bergeron, the longest-serving Bruin. "We need to rely on everyone for this thing to happen and to work. … Be smart and use common sense."

With players called up from AHL Providence to take advantage of expanded rosters, the ice was crowded on Monday, but not to the Bruins’ hoped-for capacity: Six players — scoring leader David Pastrnak, fellow forwards Ondrej Kase, Anton Blidh and Trent Frederic, defenseman Urho Vaakanainen and goalie Daniel Vladar — didn’t participate.

Following league protocols, Cassidy used the terms "unable to practice, unable to be here" to explain at least some of the absences. He left the impression that Pastrnak and Kase, who both returned to the Czech Republic after the season was suspended, had yet to fulfill reentry rules, saying "because of the timing when they got here, they’d have to have a couple of (coronavirus) tests." Others, he said, would be skating apart from the main group, "simply because of numbers." Assistant coach Kevin Dean also fell in the "unable to be here" category.

Cassidy, however, didn’t sound alarmed, saying, "I would expect a few more will join us (on Tuesday), and then we’ll go from there on a daily basis to see where they’re at."

With players subjected to a variety of testing and hygiene protocols once on site, there was no such thing as business as usual at Warrior. That’s almost the case on the ice, but even there, coaches wear masks unless they have to speak — or, in Cassidy’s case, he has to blow his whistle.

"Not having the ability to wander about within our facility is a little bit tough," defenseman Torey Krug. "Not going in and out of rooms, not doing things on your own time — that’s definitely going to be an adjustment. … It’s just not going to happen."

There aren’t many adjustments on the ice, though. The Bruins, who had the NHL’s best record through what proved to be the end of the regular season on March 11, will basically try to pick up as much as they can from where they left off, all the way to practice drills.

"I’m not looking at this as training camp," Cassidy said. "I’m going to call it Return-to-Play camp, or Return-to-Play practices.

"To me, training camp is a different mentality. It’s longer, it’s a grind, it’s the beginning of a long marathon. This isn’t the case. This is the beginning of a quick return to what I guess is comparably a sprint.

"So the timing, the execution of our practice, we need to get it up there as quickly as possible, allowing for the obvious lapse of being on the ice. That needs to be our focus every day."

After not being together as a group since a 2-0 victory at Philadelphia on March 10, the Bruins didn’t have much trouble getting out of the blocks.

"The energy level was great," Krug said. "It was fun to be back out there.

"I was very interested to see what the response would be to getting back, and trying to get in the swing of things with all the protocols we had to go through off the ice. But once we were on the ice, it was a normal day. It felt like we didn’t miss a beat."