Surgeries won't slow Lucic, Rask this season

LOWELL, Mass. – Nathan Horton won't be the only player returning from injury when the Boston Bruins report to training camp.

Milan Lucic -- who scored 30 goals last season -- and backup goaltender Tuukka Rask expect to be 100 percent ready to go when the Stanley Cup champions get back to work next month. The veteran winger and third-year netminder were the only two Bruins players confirmed to have had surgery this summer after the team completed its run to the Stanley Cup championship.

Lucic had a problem with his nose corrected, while Rask underwent an arthroscopic procedure on his left knee.

"The nose is good," Lucic said Wednesday night before the start of his charity softball game at LeLacheur Park. "(I) got that fixed, which is great because I wasn't able to breathe out of my right nostril, so that kind of (stunk). But it's more like a refreshing feeling right now that I'm able to get more oxygen intake throughout my nose."

Despite not being able to breathe right through most of the 2010-11 season, Lucic's 30 goals were a career high. He added five more in the playoffs.

"It actually happened at the end of the 2009-10 season," Lucic said of the injury. "So I played the whole season last year with it. And near the end, it started to become a pain because I started to get sinus infections and stuff like that. So that was tough to deal with. So that's why I decided right after we were done that it was time to get it fixed and we needed to get it fixed."

Although he had his nose corrected, Lucic opted to rest his broken big toe, which happened when he was hit by a Tyler Seguin shot in practice during the Eastern Conference Final. Lucic doesn't anticipate the injury, which he has tested on the ice a couple times this season, to hold him back in 2011-12.

"The X-ray is pretty funny. It's pretty destroyed," Lucic said of his toe. "But there's a little bit of pain in there, I'm not going to lie. But there's nothing really you can do to get it fixed. If I went and got surgery, I'd be out for three months and I don't think that's really worth it right now."

As for Rask, he said he "tweaked" his knee in January, but was able to play through it with the help of a pad that prevented any uncomfortable movement. He underwent a similar procedure on his right knee about four years ago, so he knows how to come back from a minor injury of this sort.

After playing in 29 games last season, Rask figures to challenge for more playing time this season.

"It was just something that we saw that was better to fix, because it would have bugged [me] in the future at some point, so it was just a minor fix-up, but the recovery was a few weeks," Rask said.