ESPNBoston.com will be checking in throughout the season with Bruins left winger and resident tough guy Milan Lucic, who is recovering from a broken index finger on his right hand. Lucic gives us a first-person account on how he's doing, his best fights and the crazy costume he saw at the Bruins' Halloween party.

As told to Louise K. Cornetta

So everyone asks how I'm doing since I got my index finger jammed in the boards. I'm good. I'm healing fast. Everything is going in the right direction. I'm happy the way things are going and should be back soon. It's always frustrating to get injured. You always want to be out there with your team trying to help them win and going into battle with them. They've been doing a good job without me, without Savy [Marc Savard, who has a broken foot]. They've been good to watch.

Since it's the finger on my right hand, I've been having to learn to do things with my left hand. Lots of stuff I've been trying for the first time as a lefty like eating, brushing my teeth, everything has been tough. I have to say brushing my teeth is up there as one of the hardest things to do. You don't really realize how you can't do something when you aren't used to using that hand. It's been funny. At least I don't drive a stick shift car!

I've been spending my time working out and watching a lot of movies, going for walks and those type of things. I've been watching movies on TV. It's funny, my girl is in town and she hadn't seen "Shawshank Redemption." So I made her watch it. I'd only seen it once. I've got to say that's been the best one I've seen recently. I'm trying to do whatever I can to keep myself occupied. When the team is on the road, I go over to Savard's house so we can watch the game together. I'd say the team has done pretty good so far this season. Obviously, I guess you could say we're a little underachieving from having a great season last year. But there's a lot of season left and we want to do whatever we can to get things on the right foot. We've just got to get back to what we were doing last year that made us so successful and go from there.

The bar is set high for us. We like it that we have high expectations. We've just got to do our best to live up to them. I think you always want to build off what you did the year before and try to get better as every year goes on. For me personally, that's what it is. Just being a factor out there every night, being a consistent player, doing whatever you can to give the team a chance to win every night.

This injury will definitely make me think twice about fighting. When you break your hand or finger, you always have to be careful after that. I'm going to have to be smart for a little bit here until it gets strong and back to normal.

For those who are going to get into a hockey fight, here's my advice: It's not bad to have butterflies in your stomach. It's not a bad thing to be nervous going into a fight, but don't let that get the best of you. Try to hit him before he hits you, that's the best advice I can give.

It's hard to pick my favorite battle that I've been in. All of them have been real good, tough battles. My first one was a nice, long one in Dallas in my first game. There were a couple here at the Garden that were long that the fans got really into. My toughest opponents? John Erskine in Washington stands out as someone who was tough, and Raitis Ivanans in L.A. and then Eric Boulton in Atlanta and Chris Neil in Ottawa are all guys who are really tough and have a good track history of being really tough to fight. They were all willing competitors and it went well for me with them.

We had a team Halloween gathering, social you could say. That wasn't bad, there were some good costumes there. I went as Harry Potter. I had the glasses, the wand, the scarf and the cloak that he wears; that was a lot of fun. The best costume was one guy who showed up as Phil Kessel; that was actually really good and really scary.

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