BOSTON — The injury-ravaged Boston lost center Patrice Bergeron for at least four weeks.

The Bruins said Bergeron sustained a rib and sternoclavicular injury during the second period of Saturday night’s game at Dallas.

Bergeron will be re-evaluated in approximately four weeks.

The Bruins recalled forward Colby Cave from Providence. Cave was Providence’s top scorer with 18 points (6-12).

The Bruins have played their last two games with five defensemen from opening night out of the lineup – Zdeno Chara (knee), Charlie McAvoy (concussion), Brandon Carlo (upper body), Kevan Miller (hand) and John Moore (lower body). Rookie Urho Vaakanainen (concussion) is also out.

Miller is expected to return for Wednesday night’s game at Detroit.

OILERS: Ken Hitchcock knows the routine well by now as he begins his tenure as Edmonton’s new coach. For the fourth time in his long coaching career, Hitchcock has been tasked with taking over a struggling team in the middle of the season.

Hitchcock was hired as coach of his hometown Oilers after the team fired Todd McLellan with the team languishing in sixth place in the Pacific Division.

“It’s not going to change overnight, but we can start taking some steps,” said Hitchcock, who led St. Louis to a first-place finish in 2011-12 after taking over as coach one month into the season.

“I told the players today I can take them to a place personally that they can’t get to themselves, but they’ve got to buy into that, and it’s not going to be comfortable at times.”

The Oilers have lost 6 of 7 games, getting outscored 27-11 in a rough start to McLellan’s fourth season behind the bench.

The team missed the playoffs in two of his previous three seasons despite having superstar Connor McDavid. The Oilers were just 9-10-1 entering their game Tuesday night at San Jose.

Hitchcock is the third-winningest coach in NHL history with an overall record of 823-506-88-119 (.603 winning percentage).

He has guided teams to eight division titles and twice to the best record in the NHL and has an 86-82 playoff record.

BLUES: GM Doug Armstrong fired Mike Yeo after Monday’s 2-0 loss to the Los Angeles Kings. Craig Berube is the interim coach while Armstrong assembles a list of candidates for the permanent job.

Hall of Famer Larry Robinson will assist Berube for three weeks to a month because of the inexperienced assistants. The 67-year-old Robinson won a Stanley Cup while coaching the New Jersey Devils.

At 7-9-3, the Blues are last in the Central Division. Their 17 points rank next to last in the NHL, ahead of only Los Angeles.

Berube, a 52-year-old former player, joined the Blues in June 2017. He coached the team’s then-AHL affiliate – the Chicago Wolves – to a 44-19-13 record and a division title during the 2016-17 season.

CAPITALS: Veteran defenseman Brooks Orpik has undergone arthroscopic surgery on his right knee and is expected to miss 4 to 6 weeks.

Orpik has missed the past nine games.

He has a goal and an assist in 10 games this season. He hasn’t played since Oct. 27 and was placed on long-term injured reserve on Nov. 9.

PENGUINS: Pittsburgh is in a 1-7-2 funk and is tied for the fewest points in the wide-open Eastern Conference a quarter of the way through the season.

“You look at the core of our players, (Sidney) Crosby, (Evgeni) Malkin, (Phil) Kessel, (Kris) Letang, all those guys can skate,” said Coach Mike Sullivan. “They can still skate.”

The thing now is, so can everyone else.

The proof came to life over the last 30 minutes against Buffalo on Monday night, when the Sabres reeled off the final four goals, including Jake Eichel’s winner 45 seconds into overtime at the end of a sequence that began with a Malkin giveaway in the offensive zone.

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