The Bruins captain is still nursing a rib injury.

BOSTON (AP) – Joe Thornton skated with his teammates and smiled afterward.

All that was missing Tuesday was a knowing wink when the Boston Bruins’ best player parroted the team’s party line that no decision had been made on whether he will play in the playoff opener. His teammates, though, liked what they saw.

“Joe looks great,” Brian Rolston said. “He’s had a few days off now to rest and I think he should be ready.”

The Bruins, seeded second in the Eastern Conference, open their first-round series against the seventh-seeded Montreal Canadiens on Wednesday night. Thornton was hurt last Thursday night and missed Boston’s last two regular-season games Saturday and Sunday against New Jersey.

Coach Mike Sullivan didn’t waver Tuesday from his statement that Thornton has an “upper body injury.” Thornton, perhaps concerned an opponent would target the specific injured area, said “the upper body feels great,” then laughed.

Thornton was hurt against the Washington Capitals after taking a slash to his right wrist and falling hard on the ice. Speculation has centered on his wrist or ribs as the injured part of his upper body.

The rib theory gained credence with one of Thornton’s remarks after Tuesday’s practice.

“The pain I don’t think will be a problem,” he said. “Just to see if I can actually go out there and move the way I want to move and things like that” is a greater uncertainty.

Might he be wearing something extra to protect the injured area?

“I wouldn’t tell you if I did,” he said with a smile.

Thornton said he wants to play and Sullivan wants to see how he recovers Wednesday morning from Tuesday’s practice.

“He’s doing OK and we’ll make a decision” Wednesday, Sullivan said. “He looked pretty good to me.”

Asked if he expected Thornton to play, Sullivan just said, “We’ll make that decision tomorrow.”

Thornton said that after Saturday’s game in Boston consideration was given by the coaches to him playing Sunday in New Jersey.

“They decided just to keep me back here and just work on it a little bit,” he said. “It worked out good and they didn’t need me.”

The Bruins won 3-1 to clinch the Northeast Division title and the No. 2 seed in the conference. Since he last played, “I feel a lot better,” Thornton said. “Everything feels pretty good.”

He led the Bruins with 33 goals and 50 assists this season and missed just five games.

“He’s one of the elite players in our league,” Montreal defenseman Sheldon Souray said. “But they played their last two games without him and they beat New Jersey pretty handily in their last game.”

The Bruins won the season series 3-2-1, but four games went to overtime and they outscored Montreal just 9-7. And the Canadiens had two wins in Boston.

In their last playoff meeting in 2002, eighth-seeded Montreal got great goaltending from Jose Theodore and upset top-seeded Boston in the first round. Boston has won only seven of the 29 playoff series between the teams.

“There’s so great a rivalry there (that) the records in the regular season really mean nothing now,” Boston’s Ted Donato said.

Like Theodore two years ago, Boston’s Andrew Raycroft is in his first season as a No. 1 goalie and is a leading candidate for rookie of the year.

Raycroft had 29 wins and a 2.05 goals against average in 57 games. Theodore won 33 games with a 2.27 goals against average in 67 games.

The Bruins gave up the third fewest goals in the Eastern Conference and improved their defense with in-season acquisitions Sergei Gonchar and Jiri Slegr.

“They’re going to try to take away our space,” said Mike Ribeiro, who led Montreal with 63 points, “but we have a lot of guys on a lot of lines that can put the puck in the net.”

And Raycroft will be the last line of defense.

He’s approaching the game “the same way I have the last 82 games. It seemed to work for me,” he said. “I’m more excited than anything else.”

AP-ES-04-06-04 1839EDT