FOXBOROUGH — This was not a place that Alexander Khokhlachev thought he would find himself. Until Wednesday, Khokhlachev had been in the minors, playing for Providence for the 10 days since his last brief call-up with the Bruins.
But he found himself on the ice at Gillette Stadium on Thursday morning for Bruins practice, skating with Frank Vatrano and Landon Ferraro, his eyes lighting up at the thought of a spot in the Winter Classic.
“Really exciting,” Khokhlachev said. “Got called up yesterday after the game in Springfield. I got really happy and excited. It will be awesome.”
He had Brad Marchand to thank.
With the Bruins shorthanded — no Marchand, no David Krejci, no David Pastrnak — Khokhlachev was called up Thursday, with Colin Miller the tough-luck recipient of a trip down to Providence. That left the Bruins with makeshift lines on a makeshift roster, all in time for another matchup with a team that hasn’t exactly made it easy on Boston of late.
Even with the breakthrough win in Montreal on Dec. 9, even with the free fall of the Canadiens in December, this is never an easy draw for the Bruins. And it will be even less so with some of their biggest names unable to suit up. That was made doubly apparent with the return of Brendan Gallagher for the Canadiens.
“We’ve had that mentality all year, next-man-up thing,” Torey Krug said. “I know we keep talking about it and it’s cliché because you keep plugging in different players in different spots, but this group just has a great mentality of how to approach things.”
Coach Claude Julien opted to move Loui Eriksson to Patrice Bergeron’s left — a position that Eriksson has not yet played with the center — and keep Seth Griffith on his right. The second line with Ryan Spooner in the middle kept Matt Beleskey on the left and added Brett Connolly. Max Talbot will center the third line, with Zac Rinaldo and Jimmy Hayes, a line about which Julien was complimentary Tuesday when Hayes scored his first career hat trick.
“It’s going to be an adjustment,” Bergeron said. “At the same time, I think they’re definitely two great players. We just have to go out there and play our game. I guess that’s what the message was today is just whatever you bring, just go out there and do it.
“Sometimes it is a bit of an adaptation and adjustment, but at the end of the day I played with Loui before and I know his tendencies. And Seth is a smart player. He knows where to position himself on the ice, so yeah, it’s got the potential to be a good line, and we have to just go out there and play our game.”
That goes for all the lines, as the Bruins try to shift and adjust and find combinations that might produce something — anything — in the wake of a good deal of their offense not being a part of Friday’s game.
“I think that’s the way we’ve approached these kind of situations where we’re missing key guys,” Bergeron said. “It’s about everyone stepping up and helping out in whatever way possible. I think it’s about playing your game and not trying to do too much and trying to be somebody you’re not.”
It was interesting that Julien decided to split up the Beleskey-Spooner-Eriksson line from Tuesday night’s game, promoting Eriksson and returning Connolly to the top six, after he had slid down to the third line.
“I thought we had a pretty good game there,” Eriksson said, of playing with Spooner and Beleskey. “[Wherever] the coach puts us, we have to take that position and try to be good. So I think we still have a good lineup here to win a game and play good.”
That’s the hope, at least. That even with the tough news of Marchand out, Gallagher in, even with no Krejci, even with all the swapping and switching and juggling and adjusting, the Bruins figure themselves out enough to make it a winning streak over Montreal — a two-game winning streak.
“You control what you can control,” Julien said. “I’m going to play with the guys I have, and our team needs to be a team. We need to just play the way we have through all these situations and that’s all we can do right now.”
Amalie Benjamin can be reached at abenjamin@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @amaliebenjamin.