Bruins’ Hampus Lindholm getting ‘closer’ in his months-long absence due to injury
"I don’t have an exact time for when he’s going to be hitting the ice, but he’s getting closer to returning to the ice.”
The Bruins will still need to wait a little longer for Hampus Lindholm’s return to the ice.
Speaking ahead of Thursday’s road matchup against the Rangers, Bruins interim head coach Joe Sacco acknowledged that the veteran defenseman is making some strides in his return from a lower-body injury.
But Lindholm has still not received the green light to return to the ice quite yet.
“He’s not skating yet, but he is getting closer to being on the ice,” Sacco told reporters in New York. “I don’t have an exact time for when he’s going to be hitting the ice, but he’s getting closer to returning to the ice.”
Lindholm has been on the shelf for nearly two months, with the veteran skater hobbled after blocking a shot off his knee in Boston’s road win over the St. Louis Blues on Nov. 12.
The Bruins have offered up little in terms of clarity of Lindholm’s injury and his expected recovery timeline, with then-Bruins coach Jim Montgomery noting the day after that Blues game that Lindholm was going to be out “weeks”.
Even though the Bruins have largely improved their game since Sacco was named interim head coach in mid-November, Boston has felt the loss of a puck-moving defenseman like Lindholm.
After trudging through a down season in 2023-24, Lindholm was arguably Boston’s most consistent and impactful skater through the first five-plus weeks of the 2024-25 campaign — posting three goals and seven points over 17 games while averaging 20:51 of ice time per contest.
Beyond his ability to log heavy minutes and contribute on the PK, Lindholm’s shot and playmaking have been missed on a Bruins roster that has only generated 12 goals from defensemen all season long.
Lindholm was expected to quarterback Boston’s struggling power-play unit during the same game in which he was injured — standing as another setback for a man advantage that ranks 30th in the NHL this year (13.0 percent).
The Bruins have primarily used both Jordan Oesterle and Parker Wotherspoon as the team’s sixth defenseman since Lindholm first went down with an injury.
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