Jason Allison leads Boston's group of talented young forwards.

Allison underwent an MRI on Tuesday and said the test revealed the injury, which has been described since last spring as a wrist problem but actually runs the entire length of the forearm.

Allison, who played in Thursday night's 4-3 loss to the Ottawa Senators, said one doctor told him to rest, while another told him he needed surgery.

"There are all kinds of tears in the muscle," he said Wednesday, a day after an MRI revealed the damage. "There are different options. If it gets better, I can play with it and rest it on the off days. If it doesn't, I'll have to take a little time off to get the swelling down."

Allison, who will continue to play for now, said the injury worsened when he took faceoffs Saturday against Carolina on Saturday.

"I've been battling on faceoffs," he said Thursday. "(Faceoffs) are something I have to make my game better. I have to get a little stronger."

Midway through the game, his arm strength had broken down so much that he couldn't take draws. He already had a cartilage tear and tendinitis in the wrist, and taking faceoffs, he said, led to the breakdown of the muscle in the arm.

"It's not tendinitis," Allison said. "The tendinitis happened because of the cartilage tear. The pressure in (the muscle along the arm) is unbelievable right now. I don't know how it built up, but it did. There are all kinds of tears in the muscle.

"There are different options," he said. "If it gets better, I can play with it and rest it on off days. If it doesn't, I'll have to take a little time off to get the swelling down by ice and muscle stimulation, and they'd cut a half-inch or an inch (along the muscle) and drain the fluid out. The pressure is too high right now."

Doctors tested the pressure in his arm Tuesday.

"Normal is like 5," Allison said. "Anything over 30 is bad, and mine was 65.

"If I hadn't taken faceoffs, I'd probably be 100 percent. The muscle couldn't handle it, and with the tendinitis, it wasn't strong enough yet and it started tearing because of all that force."