TAMPA – There was no shortage of curiosity about how Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask was going to come out for the second round series after stumbling down the stretch in the first round against the Maple Leafs.
Well, all the questions should be answered after watching Rask stop 34 saves, take a broken skate blade-chucking nutty in the middle of the second period and ultimately backstop a strong 6-2 win in Game 1 of the second round against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Amalie Arena. It was an eventful game for Rask with some pretty strong saves and not a single soft goal allowed during his 36 shots faced, but the real moment of truth arrived with Tampa’s second goal.
After a run-in with Brayden Point near the Boston net, Rask had the left skate blade pop out of his skate and then watched Mikhail Sergachev smoke a point shot past him as he was flailing and screaming for the referees to blow the whistle for a stoppage. The whistle never arrived, and instead, Rask flew into a rage as he hobbled around the ice on a broken skate blade and ultimately gunned the broken blade after the side boards when he realized the goal was going to count.
By the letter of the law, the refs made the right call by not stopping play due to a problem with the Bruins goaltender’s equipment in the crease. But they admitted to Rask after the period that they would have blown the whistle had they noticed the skate blade lying in the crease where it could have potentially sliced open a player if things had gone wrong.
“The refs told me if they’d seen [the broken blade] they would have blown it [dead],” said Rask. “You can’t make a save and you’re scrambling out there, and the shot goes high. So then I was just trying to get [the blade] fixed and get back in there. I don’t know if the stoppage in play helped [him regain his composure].
“Any time you’re a goalie you really need to let it go and then just focus on the next shot. When it’s a weird play like that it’s tougher to stay focused, but we kept battling and it didn’t end up making a difference in the game.”
Boston Bruins
Did Rask have any second thoughts about throwing the broken skate blade toward the penalty boxes at the end of his on-ice tirade? Or was it more like his milk crate-tossing escapade to blow off steam in Providence that made him a household hockey name before he’d ever even won his first playoff game for the Black and Gold?
“Well, I didn’t throw it at anybody, so that was good,” said Rask. “If I threw it at somebody, I would like to apologize. But I just wanted to make sure I showed everybody that my blade was out.
“I was mad because I was yelling for many seconds trying to get their attention. Obviously, I didn’t know what the rule was, and then when I asked afterward the ref said if they had seen it, they would have blown it [dead]. That was after the period when I asked him.”
Most impressively Rask dialed right back into his game, and stopped the final 15 shots he faced after the skate blade incident, including a low, glove-side save on Ondrej Palat when it was still a one-goal game in the second period. As the Bruins did against Toronto in Game 7 of the last round, they simply put Tampa Bay away with three unanswered goals in the final 20 minutes to blow the Lightning out of the water after that second-period incident.
After the game, it was left to his Bruins teammates to marvel at Rask’s ability to reel things back in and play even-keeled, dominant hockey between the pipes after an emotional outburst that could have derailed him.
“You get emotional like that. You get attached to the game like [Rask] was, it gives you extra energy,” said Patrice Bergeron. “I thought he was great. I thought it was fun to watch, I guess. I wasn’t sure if he should have thrown that skate blade….I was like ‘No, don’t do that.’ But at least nobody was around there.
“It’s nice to see that emotion out of him. The way he stepped up in that game definitely gives us a lot of confidence. I didn’t think he played any better [after throwing the blade] because you could tell he was dialed in from the very first shift of the game. When you see emotions like that and him getting rattled like that when the puck goes in, it’s a pretty great indicator that he wants it. It definitely gives you energy on the bench and makes you want to do it for him as well.”
Certainly, he looked more like a cutthroat competitor not willing to give an inch in a playoff battle rather than the unsure, hyperactive goaltender that took the ice for Game 7 last week at the Garden.
It actually appears like Rask pushed the big reset button on his own playoff performance after struggling at the end of the first round, and could very much follow in the footsteps of his 2013 postseason with the Black and Gold. Rask also struggled in the first round against the Maple Leafs five years ago in their playoff series and then posted save percentages of .936 and .984 respectively against the Rangers and Penguins en route to the Stanley Cup Final run.
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He looked like a different, calmer version of himself in the crease in a new series against a Tampa Bay team he’s often owned in the past.
“It’s a new series. You try to come off on top of the first game trying to get a lead,” said Rask. “That’s where my focus was, like every game just trying to give my team a chance to win. We knew they would come out hard in the first period, so weather the storm and then get a lead. That’s what we did.
“Every game is a new game. Every series is a new series. You go with the process, and I said you don’t get too high or too low.”
Now it’s a matter of Rask following through with his strong, confident play in the opener against the Tampa Bay Lightning, and continuing to try and change the narratives out there about him in big games and his ability to lead his hockey club to the promised land. His efforts on Saturday afternoon were certainly another check mark in the “good” category after both Rask and his hockey club escaped a potential first-round demise.