Should Krejci miss any time, Cassidy will have to do some tweaking to his forward lines. But with the emergence of Charlie Coyle that job will be far easier. Coyle, acquired from the Minnesota Wild just ahead of this year's trade deadline, was brought in to solidify the Bruins' third line center spot, as well as serve as insurance should Krejci or Patrice Bergeron have to miss any time.
"We had that conversation internally for a long time," said Cassidy. "Do we have a guy that could move up? We plugged guys in there that played well at times, but could they move up in the event of a Bergeron or Krejci injury? We know Sean Kuraly can go from fourth line to third line, we know we have ourselves covered with Acciari and Wagner down in the lineup.
"Charlie's a big piece of the puzzle in that situation if one of those guys isn't able to go. We're thankful to have him."
The Bruins were certainly thankful to have Coyle on Thursday night. The Weymouth native scored two massive goals, the tying tally with just under five minutes remaining in regulation and the overtime winner early in the extra session.
Coyle now has five goals in eight postseason games and has been the highlight of a recent emergence of secondary scoring. Boston's last eight goals? Joakim Nordstrom, Marcus Johansson, Kuraly, Coyle, Bergeron, Acciari, Coyle, and Coyle.
"To win in playoffs, you need every line, every D pairing, and both goalies to pull their weight and everyone's done that so far," said Brad Marchand. "It's the reason we got through the first round and won [Thursday] night. Coyle's line was very, very good for us [in Game 1], got a big goal to tie it up and obviously got the winner in OT. It's great to see that contribution by them. They've been very good all playoffs."