Boston Bruins defenseman Nikita Zadorov played the latter portion of the team’s first-round series against the Buffalo Sabres with an MCL that was “fully [torn] off the bone,” he told the media yesterday. Zadorov’s status was up in the air before game five. But other than that moment, his availability for games was not seen to be in question. The injury did appear to impact his play, though, as The Athletic’s Fluto Shinzawa wrote Zadorov “was compromised” after his MCL tear.
Zadorov, 31, is one of Boston’s most experienced defensemen and a blueliner who plays a significant role in head coach Marco Sturm‘s lineup. Standing 6’7″, 255 pounds, Zadorov scored 22 points in 81 games this season, also registering 152 penalty minutes and 196 hits. He averaged 20:52 time on ice per game during the regular season, good for No. 3 on the team.
Other notes from Boston:
- Zadorov wasn’t the only Bruins veteran battling an injury against the Sabres. Veteran forward Viktor Arvidsson sustained a fractured rib and punctured lung, relays Conor Ryan of the Boston Globe. Arvidsson was No. 4 on the Bruins in scoring in the regular season, potting 25 goals and 54 points in 69 games. He suffered his injury in game four and wasn’t able to play in games five or six. The 33-year-old, who scored just 27 points the year before joining the Bruins, is set to become a UFA this summer.
- While some players suffer injuries only during the course of a playoff series, other suffer the injuries earlier in the season and the ailments just become something to manage over the course of the entire rest of the campaign. Veteran defenseman Hampus Lindholm is one of the players in the latter category, as he told the media today that he played through a foot fracture that he first suffered in December. The Bruins’ No. 2 defenseman behind Charlie McAvoy has seen his last two campaigns defined by injury, as a lower-body injury limited him to just 17 games played in 2024-25. This past season, he scored 26 points in 67 contests averaging 21:37 time on ice per game.