Uh-oh. It looks like late season Tuukka Rask has finally shown up for the Boston Bruins, and that's not a good development at all.
After playing remarkably consistent hockey for most of the season and getting plenty of rest along the way thanks to Jaroslav Halak, Tuukka Rask is beginning to show signs of trouble. After not playing particularly well in a 5-4 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning earlier this week, Rask coughed up a killer, soft shorthanded goal in the second period and allowed three goals on 14 shots in the first couple of periods while being outplayed by Roberto Luongo.
Pull back even further and Rask is 2-3-0 with an .881 save percentage in his last five games and is far from the top of his game with the postseason less than a couple of weeks away. Unfortunately, the late regular season swoons leading into the playoffs are just as routine for Rask as are the extreme slow starts to the season, and it looks like he's following that season arc once again.
Cassidy was pretty critical of Rask in calling him "average" after the loss to Tampa Bay, but he pulled back on his words following a loss to Florida where the whole team was downright "blah" from beginning to end.
"I don't want to go too far back. We addressed it in Tampa. We gave up some high-end chances. We needed one more save. Were they bad goals? Absolutely not. They were all good goals.
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Tonight, we didn't generate enough anyways, so it may not have mattered, but again...the third goal we needed a save on to stay in the game," said Bruce Cassidy. "We battled back from 2-0, 2-1. You could tell we didn't have our A-game. Our execution was off, so I don't want to stick around your question.
"Yeah, we needed one more save, but this was a team loss, a total team loss [against Florida], in my estimation. We just were not crisp with the puck. Another day, if we had a little more puck luck we might squeeze a point or two or get a win. But we certainly wouldn't walk away and say ‘boy, this was one of our better ones', no matter how this turned out today."
So it was clearly not Boston's day on Saturday afternoon against a Florida team playing out the string, and neither of the first two goals allowed were bad per se. The first was a point shot that deflected a couple of times on the way past Rask, and the second was an all-out D-zone breakdown where Aaron Ekblad was wide open to shoot close to the net. Sure it was a juicy Rask rebound that bounced right to Evgenii Dadonov for the rebound score, but the coverage around the front of the net was alarmingly slow and soft from Zdeno Chara and Charlie McAvoy.
But the third goal was a soft back-breaker from Rask, and that effectively ended Boston's chances of coming on a day that didn't seem theirs.
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The Bruins top power play unit played fast and loose with the puck, and it turned into Troy Brouwer winning a foot race to a loose puck. Brouwer snapped one from the face-off circle that caught Rask off his angle and managed to sneak inside the far post for the NHL-leading 15thshorthanded goal allowed by the Bruins this season.
That's a big number that also deserves plenty of investigation and criticism, but it was also a play where your No. 1 goalie needs to step up and make a save. That's why he's paid $7 million per season and it's what the Bruins will need if they want to go on a long run in the postseason. Unfortunately, Rask wasn't up to the task on Saturday afternoon and copped to a bad goal surrendered after it was all over.
"Yeah, I had a bad read because I thought I might have had the chance to play it, you know. Then I was just way out of the net and it was a nice move," said Rask. "But that's one of the shots that you would like to have saved, especially in a 2-1 game on a power play. But, you know, I didn't and that's it. Hopefully next time I will."
Rask has enjoyed a very good year while being held well under 50 games played no matter how many of the final four games he plays in the final week of the regular season. He said as much after the loss when asked how he feels about his game.
"Past few games? Good, good," said Rask, when asked how he's felt the last few games. "Past few months? Feel good."
The Bruins have to hope that's more than just brave words in the face of an oncoming tailspin for their No. 1 goaltender with the playoffs just around the corner. Of course, things could be a little different this season with another goalie in Halak that could very easily step in for Rask should any faltering take place during the Stanley Cup playoffs.
The Bruins have to hope it's just a blip on the radar screen for Rask and that he'll again be at the top of his game once the postseason gets going in a couple of weeks. But they'd better be prepared in case it's another late-season struggle for their No. 1 goalie because we've all seen this feel-bad movie play out before when it comes to Rask late in the season.
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