Concerning update on Marchand, important one on Pastrnak at Bruins’ practice

There were finally some positive news in Boston on Tuesday when star forward David Pastrnak made his first training camp appearance at Warrior Ice Arena. While he wore a maroon non-contract jersey during an optional practice, it was the first time he made his way back from offseason hip surgery.

Pastrnak underwent a successful right hip arthroscopy and labral repair on Sept. 16 and was given a five-month recovery from the time of the procedure, which would take him to mid-February. It was revealed earlier at camp opening that the star forward is a bit ahead of schedule in his rehab.

“I know that Bruce alluded to it that he might be ahead of schedule. We don’t pick any one particular day that we circled on the calendar,” said Bruins general manager Don Sweeney, per NHL.com. 

“We’ll allow him to go through his progressions so our training staff, our entire medical group, and the strength and conditioning side of it can find out where he’s at and continue to increase his load overall as he goes through.

“You saw him with a bunch of players today integrating into some of those situations, which is really his first day. And he’ll continue to do that as he goes along while we’re on the road. Unfortunately, he won’t be with us on the road to do some of those battle situations and we don’t have extra players around to be able to facilitate that.

“But we expect him to fully re-integrate into practice upon our return and then we’ll get a much better indication of where he is, sort of circling a date sometime in February.”

However, the news wasn’t as good when it came to forward Brad Marchand, who’s been attending practices since the opening of camp. On Tuesday, he was forced to miss practice with main group for the second consecutive day as he continues to pace himself in his rehab from offseason hernia surgery. 

“Just a couple days going through some soreness associated with his offseason [surgery],” said Sweeney. “Obviously, we’re being cautious with Brad and his return to play. We set a goal for him to be there Opening Night. We still expect that to happen, but we have to react with how he’s feeling.”

Sweeney made it sound like Marchand would be back at it for Wednesday’s practice in Brighton, but we will have to keep an eye on how he’s doing in terms of when he can wear the uniform and play in the season.