It has been a week since Shawn Thornton of the Boston Bruins lost a fight against John Scott and went down with a concussion that had an estimated recovery time of seven to 10 days. Seven days later, he's already been cleared for both practice and contact, though he's not sure yet if he will be playing on Feb. 9 against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
He's been skating and biking, plus he practiced with a few other teammates at Ristuccia Memorial Arena on Feb. 7 along with another injured Bruin, Daniel Paille.
As is typical for Thornton, he downplayed what happened with Scott as just something that's bound to happen after more than 400 fights in his career to date. He also insisted that it wasn't necessary for any of his teammates to avenge the fight, singling out the tall Zdeno Chara as someone who especially did not need to go after the equally tall Scott.
"Listen, Zee’s our best player and arguably the best defenseman in the league. There’s no reason for him to have to fight my battles. I’ve done this for a long time and it’s on me," he said. "Listen, if I knocked him out I wasn’t expecting somebody to come grab me the next shift. It’s part of it. We’re both men and it happens."
Thornton and Paille's status for the Saturday matinee game will be announced later, as will the status of Brad Marchand, who missed practice because he was being evaluated by team doctors.
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