Bruins can’t shake the injury bug

NHL. There’s a dark cloud hanging over the Bruins and it’s not the red-hot Capitals intent on stealing the final Eastern Conference playoff spot. It’s the injury bug, and it simply won’t go away.

Before taking the ice Thursday night at TD Bank­north Garden for an all-important clash with Toronto, the B’s added another key player to the growing injury list, announcing that right wing Chuck Kobasew will miss at least four weeks with a fractured tibia.

Kobasew, the team’s second-leading scorer with 22 goals, joins Marc Savard — tops on the team in points — and defenseman Andrew Ference on the list of those sidelined in the last week. Savard (back) will be out at least through the weekend, and Ference (knee) was inactive Thursday night.

“It’s a situation that we’ve been in, with injuries all year, and I don’t think anything changes,” Bruins head coach Claude Julien said. “You have to rely on the people that you have at your disposal to play hard and play well.”

Julien lost star center Patrice Bergeron and defenseman Andrew Alberts to concussions and goalie Manny Fernandez to knee surgery before the New Year, and weathered a 1-2-2 stretch without captain Zdeno Chara earlier this month.

Such a run of bang-ups hasn’t helped a team clinging to a two-point lead over the Capitals with six games to play, entering Thursday night. Tuesday’s 6-2 win in Toronto, which broke a three-game losing streak and snapped the B’s out of a month-long offensive funk, rubbed a little balm on the wounds.

“I think it’s a real credit to the guys in the dressing room, not that they really bought into [feeling sorry for themselves],” Julien said. “There are things that you can control in this game, and there are things that you can’t. Obviously, the injuries, you can’t.”