Bruins battle injury, inconsistent play

The Bruins (5-6-0) will wrap up a mediocre opening month to their 2014-15 season Thursday in Buffalo (7 p.m., NESN), and in order to enter November with a .500 record they’ll have to find victory without the services of some of their top talent.

Zdeno Chara has been out of action a week now but the defense took another blow in Tuesday’s 4-3 loss to the Wild when Torey Krug broke one of his fingers. Krug will be out two-to-three weeks.

Making matters worse, forward Brad Marchand left Wednesday’s practice with an undisclosed injury.

“I don’t know,” Bruins head coach Claude Julien told ESPNBoston.com. “Obviously, he tweaked something and I’m not going to say more than that because we hope he’ll be in our lineup [against Buffalo on Thursday].”

Wednesday’s practice was interesting in that Julien shifted around his lines a tad. Chris Kelly and Simon Gagne joined Patrice Bergeron on one line with Brad Marchand, Carl Soderberg and Loui Eriksson on another. The only line that was steady was the top line of Milan Lucic, David Krejci and Seth Griffith.

Krejci and Lucic lead the Bruins in points so far this season with nine and eight, respectively. Griffith has been tremendous in the past 10 days, pumping in five points in his last four games.