Bruins’ Jim Montgomery, Linus Ullmark Provide Positive Update On Injury
Bruins goalie Linus Ullmark returned to the ice ahead of Boston’s matchup with the St. Louis Blues on Saturday.
Ullmark suffered a lower-body injury in the overtime period of the Bruins loss to the Arizona Coyotes on Wednesday with head coach Jim Montgomery stating Ullmark would be considered day-to-day.
“Really good sign,” Montgomery told reporters, per the team. “He’s progressing faster than we anticipated.”
Since it was Ullmark’s first day on the ice since the injury occurred, Montgomery added the Bruins netminder was just “starting his process toward being a player again.”
Ullmark said he was and wasn’t surprised to be back on the ice with the team as quickly as he was.
“Both yes and no. It felt better, I would say,” Ullmark said, per the team. “It didn’t feel as bad as I expected, but also didn’t feel as good as I wanted to. That’s sort of like, it’s hard to pick and choose.”
Ullmark also noted the pace of morning skate is different than being in game action.
“There wasn’t a lot of high-speed scoring chances,” he said. “It was just doing stuff at the end and trying to get a feel for it and see how it felt. But, pleased with it, for now at least.
“We take it day by day. There’s nothing wrong with playing through some adversity, some sort of aches and pains and stuff like that as long as you’re not stupid and lie to yourself that, ‘I’m fine,’ but you’re injured. I’m positive.”
Ullmark joked with the media that he wasn’t able to express how he felt at the moment when the injury occurred but did offer a kid-approved version of emotions.
“Shoot,” the reigning Vezina Trophy winner said. “I recognized the pain from some stuff that I’ve done in the past, so I knew it was pretty severe at the time, but I didn’t know how severe.
“Also, you feel guilty. Your conscience is not in the right place because you go in (the locker room), and as soon as you come in here, you see the clock stopped and hear the cheers from outside. You feel bad just because you put your partner in that position and the team in that position. It’s never a situation where you’re satisfied or happy with it. Obviously, I wanted to end the game and win the game, but you can’t beat yourself up too much as well. Things are going to happen, and you have to keep your head up.”
The good news is that Ullmark shared that “everything looked good” on the medical images.
“I was very happy with that. We’ll build off of it and do what we need to do moving forward,” Ullmark said. “… I feel like we can really build off of this and come back stronger.”
Neither Ullmark nor Montgomery provided any type of timeline of how long the goalie would be sidelined from game action.
