Boston Bruins defenseman Brandon Carlo has been downgraded from day-to-day to week-to-week, the Bruins announced Saturday.
Word of Carlo’s downgrade comes just two days after the 6-foot-5 defender left Thursday’s game due to an upper-body injury, and after Carlo missed Friday’s practice, and with little update available from Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy.
Thursday was just Carlo’s second game back in action after missing 10 games due to a concussion on a headshot from the Capitals’ Tom Wilson in a Mar. 5 win over the Capitals. Wilson was hit with a seven-game suspension for the hit, while Carlo battled his third documented concussion since Apr. 2017.
It’s unclear as to whether or not this new absence is related to those concussion woes, but it was hard to find any specific hit or incident that knocked Carlo out of Thursday’s loss to the Penguins, and Carlo did note some of his difficulties with his recovery from this most recent concussion.
“It’s been a trying year for [Carlo],” Cassidy, whose team is 4-4-2 without Carlo available this season, said before Saturday’s meeting with the Penguins. “At the end of the day, that’s the hand we’re dealt.”
Now in his fifth full season, the 24-year-old Carlo had started his 2021 campaign with two goals, an assist, and a plus-10 rating, along with 32 hits and 33 blocked shots, in 23 games.
With Carlo out, and with Kevan Miller still on the shelf due to knee discomfort (Saturday will make it 19 straight absences for Miller), Steven Kampfer will get the call to jump back into the mix for the Bruins.