Friday brought an end to Boston's postseason, the Bruins dropping their opening-round set against Buffalo's Sabres by a 4-2 series count. Come Sunday, with the squad holding its annual Breakdown Day session in front of reporters, the players let on that they had been gutting through a handful of genuinely serious ailments.
Seemingly making light of things, Viktor Arvidsson described a cracked rib alongside a small puncture in one of his lungs. Coming back on such a short turnaround had proven tough and unlucky, he conceded, though he wrote it off as simply part of hockey.
Boston's Swedish winger picked up the injury during Game 4, then sat out the fifth and sixth games from the sidelines as the matchup with Buffalo unfolded. Serious as the damage was, his hope had been to suit up should the Bruins manage to stretch things to a seventh game. What he treasured most, Arvidsson noted, was the group itself and the sheer fun they shared as a unit.
A full recovery after a collapsed lung generally runs somewhere around six to eight weeks, as Cleveland's Clinic notes, though milder situations like the one Arvidsson dealt with may close up inside one or two weeks. Strict bed rest tends to be the usual prescription — anywhere from the opening few days up to roughly a fortnight — after which patients get warned away from strenuous exertion, hauling anything heavy, and boarding flights, which amounts to basically everything a brutal Stanley Cup postseason grind asks of a player.
A small tear in the groin, one he'd first sustained back in November, dogged Boston standout David Pastrnak.
In owning up to the issue, Pastrnak framed it as a minor groin problem and admitted he wasn't sure whether tear or torn was the right word, nor what set them apart. The trouble had cropped up in November, he noted, then flared again somewhat sooner than anticipated. Mentally it weighed on him as a competitor — he recalled how the pain stuck with him and how he wrestled with it for a spell — but he added that his skating had steadied considerably over the previous month and his confidence had returned. That was the lone concern, he said, and throughout the playoff run he regarded himself as healthy.
Across 77 appearances on the year, Pastrnak again cleared the 100-point threshold for a fourth straight campaign. His 29 goals placed him third among Bruins skaters, while a team-leading 71 helpers paced the club over those 82 games. He also fronted Boston's scoring in that opening-round meeting, notching seven points — three goals and four assists — across six contests, capped by a sizable tally in the sixth game.
Game 6 tally from David Pastrnak
A whole lot of abuse landed on the face of Charlie McAvoy throughout the year.
Boston's top blueliner came away with a busted jaw and several missing teeth after taking a slapper from Noah Dobson on the 15th of November in 2025.
Slapshot strikes Charlie McAvoy flush in the head
Then came an elbow to his face, courtesy of a reckless Panthers hit delivered by forward Sandis Vilmanis early in February — the fourth, to be exact.
Charlie McAvoy has shared a photo of his swollen face after taking an elbow from Panthers' Sandis Vilmanis the other night 🤕 Vilmanis faced no supplemental discipline for the hit besides a 2-minute minor penalty. pic.twitter.com/2wnvVagHzh — Gino Hard (@GinoHard\_) February 7, 2026
Not long after, on the fourth of March, a redirected puck caught him flush, and by March 10 he'd shed still more teeth following a check that drove him into the boards from his blind side.
McAvoy's face came through the playoffs without fresh damage, yet he still wound up with one more painful problem. There were a few matters needing immediate attention, he explained — he'd fractured his hand during the second game, leaving an appointment booked for the following day plus MRIs on the docket. Dental arrangements and what he jokingly termed some summer "makeovers" were also on his list, and he quipped that he hoped to emerge a touch more in one piece.
Through the season's back stretch, Boston rearguard Hampus Lindholm soldiered on with a cracked bone in his foot. Even then, suiting up for 67 regular-season contests plus every single playoff date this past 2025-26 season buoyed him, especially having come off a pair of serious knee setbacks that had limited him to a mere 17 appearances the season prior.
As Lindholm told it, the prior year had been rough while he watched from the press box recovering from two significant knee operations. He'd poured plenty of offseason effort into climbing back toward the bar he holds for himself, he explained, and then absorbed his share of knocks this year — among them a minor fracture in the foot around the holidays that has lingered and pestered him somewhat, though it's finally healing up now, clearing the way toward a normal, full offseason of training.
As for Elias Lindholm, the Boston forward was working through year two of a back problem that had originally flared up during the very offseason in which he came aboard.
Suiting up for Sweden, Elias Lindholm shared that his body felt far from right as he traveled over for the Olympics at Milan-Cortina, but that he pushed through anyway. Once back with the team, he said, he kept at the grind yet never quite located the rhythm or confidence to play his usual game — a rough patch, in his words.
Over the course of the year, the Bruins forward received a back injection on no fewer than one occasion, including a shot ahead of his February departure for Italy. Pressed on whether he'd reached 100 percent at any stage, he chuckled and answered that he had, early in the year.
Striking as those various injuries are, the runaway winner of the unofficial "get-well-soon" honors might just be Nikita Zadorov. According to the Boston defenseman, he competed in the playoff series' closing four games carrying a completely torn MCL that had pulled away from the bone.
Speaking to NESN, Zadorov relayed that the MCL had let go during the third game, fully detaching, and that he soldiered on with it for some time.
He certainly did. On a per-game basis Zadorov skated north of 20 minutes nightly and piled up 37 box minutes alongside 17 hits throughout the matchup.
His offseason conditioning figures to suffer because of the knee trouble, but the expectation is that Zadorov should regain full health once 2026-27 gets underway.
Marco Sturm, who coaches the Bruins, hailed him as a warrior and passed along that the team's medical group claimed to have never witnessed anything quite like it.
Amalie Benjamin, who writes for the Globe in Boston, made the point that not a single player reached for the ailments as an alibi for how they performed.
Just a small clarification on what happens on break-up days across the NHL. The media asks players what their health status is on every team after every playoff series. They are not generally volunteering their bumps and bruises. <https://t.co/9DJvGXvxNi> — Amalie Benjamin (@AmalieBenjamin) May 3, 2026
To a man, McAvoy said, the players had emptied themselves into the year.