Bruins wish Blue Jackets' Tortorella speedy recovery

The Boston Bruins and coach Claude Julien sent their best wishes for a speedy recovery to Columbus Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella via Twitter on Saturday, a day after Tortorella sustained two fractured ribs following a collision with forward Rene Bourque during an outdoor practice in Columbus.

Tortorella did not travel with the Blue Jackets to Boston on Friday afternoon and will not coach them Saturday against the Bruins (7 p.m. ET; FS-O, NESN). Associate coach Craig Hartsburg will fill in for Tortorella.

"Hopefully he's feeling better. ... He's a tough guy. I'm sure he'll be back at it before you know it," Julien said in comments tweeted by the Bruins.

The Blue Jackets' Twitter responded: "thanks, Coach!"

@NHLBruins thanks, Coach!

— NHL Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) January 23, 2016

The Blue Jackets practiced outdoors Friday at Winter Park in McFerson Commons, across from Nationwide Arena.

The workout came to a temporary halt after about 20 minutes when Bourque fell and undercut Tortorella, who landed heavily on the ice.

After being attended to on the ice for nearly five minutes, the coach gingerly skated off to applause from the several hundred fans watching the workout.

Tortorella was able to walk the half-block to the arena soon after leaving the ice, but at about 1 p.m. ET, nearly two hours after the fall, he was transported by ambulance to Riverside Methodist Hospital for evaluation and was released.

The Blue Jackets were in the midst of a 3-on-3 drill when the accident occurred. Tortorella was standing near center ice along the left boards and was looking away from the approaching Bourque.

"I hit a rut. There's big rut in the ice, a hole, and I went down," Bourque said. "I fell into him and took his feet out. I didn't even see [Tortorella]. It happened so fast. I knew I hit something but I didn't have time to turn around and see him fall. I didn't know who I hit."

Defenseman Seth Jones said he saw the collision from the bench.

"It looked pretty nasty," he said.

Tortorella going down typifies the run of injuries that have carried over from last season, when Columbus lost 508 man-games to injury.

Starting goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky left the game Thursday against the Calgary Flames, his second since missing 17 games because of a groin injury. He was placed on injured reserve Friday because of the groin problem and is out indefinitely.

Backup goaltender Curtis McElhinney (ankle), defenseman David Savard (oblique) and forward David Clarkson (upper body) are out. Forwards Nick Foligno (head) and Matt Calvert (knee) were activated from IR on Friday.

"We were out here to have fun and Bourque falls," Foligno said. "I feel so bad for John and Bourque. The funny thing about [Tortorella], he's tougher than all of us. If you see him down you know he's hurt.

"Now that [injuries] are going into our coaching staff, hopefully it's moved past our players."

The practice was held outside to kick off the opening of the rink Friday for public skating through Feb. 21.