What appeared to be the most violent hit of yesterday’s game produced the most harmless result.
Late in the second period, the Bruins’ Daniel Paille pursued a puck in the neutral zone. By accident, Brooks Orpik made Paille pay.
As Paille approached the red line, the rock-hard Penguins defenseman ran into the left winger. Paille sailed into the air and landed on his back, but he wasn’t hurt.
“I’m pretty sure he wasn’t trying to hit me,’’ Paille said. “We just collided and he ended up getting the best of me. I’m sure it looked pretty bad. But I feel great.’’
Some of Paille’s teammates weren’t so lucky in what ended up a 2-1 loss at TD Garden.
Dennis Seidenberg missed more than 10 minutes of the third period after Joe Vitale blasted him with a hit along the boards. Seidenberg suffered a cut that required approximately 20 stitches to close, according to coach Claude Julien, who didn’t specify where Seidenberg was cut.
Late in the third, Bruins Joe Corvo and Andrew Ference collided, and Corvo skated off the ice favoring his right arm. He returned to the bench less than a minute later.
Patrice Bergeron was in pain after a third-period shift. On the bench, Bergeron appeared to be flexing his right hand.
Later in the third, Brad Marchand cut a shift short after Orpik rode him into the end boards. Marchand emerged from the check with his right arm tucked into his body. He didn’t miss a shift, but was hunched over in pain on the bench.
“A lot of those things, we’ll see tomorrow,’’ said Julien, whose team visits the Capitals this afternoon. “Those are injuries where they came back and finished the game. You’ve got to check them out again the next day.’’
Mixing, matching
Rich Peverley started on the first line for the fourth straight time in place of Nathan Horton. But Peverley sat for the final 14 minutes as Julien fiddled with the No. 1 line. Chris Kelly, who usually centers the No. 3 line, was bumped up to serve as David Krejci’s right wing.
Julien said Peverley’s benching was not injury-related. Peverley had zero shots in 14:06 of ice time.
Milan Lucic and Benoit Pouliot alternated shifts on the left side.
“A little bit of everything,’’ Julien said when asked whether the changes were because of injuries or performance. “We still need more out of certain guys. At the same time, there were a few guys banged up and guys that had gone off for a while. So we kind of mixed them up.
“But I wanted to find some sort of a little spark when we were down, 2-0. Our guys, you could sense it on the bench that the second goal really hurt a lot. I wanted to give the team another spark and start focusing on battling back.’’
Caron recalled
