The Bruins might be off for the next nine days, but they’ll have to spend most of their bye week waiting on pins and needles in regards to the status of Tuukka Rask, who exited Saturday’s loss against the Rangers with a concussion after colliding with Filip Chytil in the crease. There’s plenty to dissect following Rask’s exit, so here are four thoughts on Rask’s injury and where the Bruins go from here.
1. There’s no timetable for Rask’s return
Given the fact that the Bruins will be off for the next nine days, we most likely won’t receive any official update on Rask’s status until at least Monday, Jan. 28 — Boston’s next scheduled practice at Warrior Ice Arena.
From the initial eye test, it certainly didn’t look good for Rask — who not only took most of Chytil’s body to the head on his rush toward the crease, but also knocked the back of his head up against his net and on the ice.
Tuukka Rask suffered a concussion after this nasty collision with Filip Chytil ? pic.twitter.com/NospP08pfb
— Hockey Night in Canada (@hockeynight) January 20, 2019
While he was eventually helped back on his skates, Rask needed to be supported by both
Charlie McAvoy
and
David Pastrnak
in order to get back on the bench and down the tunnel — with the netminder obviously in rough shape after suffering a severe brain injury.
“
He’s concussed. That’s all I know, so he’ll go into protocol,” Bruce Cassidy said of any update following the game. “The best-case scenario for those is usually the next day if he’s doing well. Then he’s up and running and it shouldn’t be too badly affected by it other than the immediate, today’s kind of pain and symptoms. If he’s not, then it’s one of those where you just keep your fingers crossed and hope it settles itself out quickly.”
This marks the second year in a row in which Rask has lost time due to a concussion, as the netminder missed three games last October — a span of seven days — after
Anders Bjork
collided with him during practice.
Given Rask’s state in the minutes following the hit, you have to be concerned that the goalie will be on the shelf for at least some stretch of time. Unlike most injuries, concussions can have a variable recovery timetable — something the Bruins know all too well this season with similar head injuries to McAvoy,
David Backes, Urho Vaakanainen
Jake DeBrusk.
2. Wrong place, wrong time for Charlie McAvoy
Cassidy made it clear following the game — while Chytil drove hard to the net and Rask while in the midst of an end-to-end rush, it didn’t appear that the 19-year-old winger was hellbent on steamrolling Boston’s goalie en route to his ninth goal of the season.
“I don’t think there’s intent to hit the goalie. I think that’s rare,” Cassidy said. “There’s probably a player or two that tries not to get out of the way, for sure. I don’t think this kid tried to hit him. I think he did hit him. How much Charlie affected that?”
For McAvoy, it was simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time on a bang-bang, split-second play. While McAvoy noted postgame that contact was “unavoidable” on the play, it appeared that Chytil was attempting to motion to his left when he collided with McAvoy in the crease, sending him airborne and right into Rask.
“It’s terrible. You never want to see that, you don’t wish that on their goalie, you don’t wish that on anyone really,” McAvoy said. “That guy goes in a million miles an hour, he hits him. Like I said it looked like unavoidable contact, obviously Tuukka took the brunt of that. … I tried to just take away the pass, he brought it to the net and he jumps through. I had two hands on my stick, I didn’t feel like I shoved him at all, just unfortunate, it sucks, you hate to see it.”
McAvoy had the right intention on the play — taking the body in an effort to knock Chytil off course and jostle the puck away from danger. However, he was about a split second too late. It’s an unfortunate sequence for the 21-year-old defensemen, who will now have to sit on it going into the bye week.
“Yeah, he obviously didn’t mean to,” Brad Marchand said of McAvoy. “You know he’s coming back hard to try and kill a play and when things are going at that speed you can’t anticipate what’s going to happen so, you know, stuff like that happens. By no means is it Chuck’s fault. Plays happen like that in the game of hockey and – but we’re all very concerned about him and thinking about him and hope he’s feeling better here soon.”
3. A slumping Jaroslav Halak will be counted on heavily if Rask is out for an extended stretch
Rask played a key role in Boston’s five-game winning streak that started at the end of December — entering Saturday’s game with a record of 6-0-1 in his last seven outings with a save percentage of .942
If Rask is forced to miss time beyond the bye week, you’d expect either
Zane McIntyre
or
Dan Vladar
to get the call up from Providence to serve in a backup role — a bit of a daunting task given both goalies’ pedestrian numbers so far in the 2018-19 campaign. Vladar boasts a 6-8-4 record with an .896 save percentage, while McIntyre follows suit with a 13-8-3 record and an .884 save percentage.
If Boston is to stay afloat in the worst-case scenario of an extended absence for Rask, it will be
Jaroslav Halak
that will need to assume the role of stopper — a situation that Boston would have likely embraced earlier this season when Halak was one of the top netminders in the league.
4. Timing wise, Bruins might have caught a break
“Well, the timing, listen ... I don’t want this to come out of context, but the timing is probably the best it’s ever going to be, right? If you’re going to have this injury because you do have nine days before you play again, so for any player,” Cassidy said. “But there is no good timing, having said that, because who knows how it’ll play out for him. So, it’s unfortunate. We’ve been healthy at the goaltender position. That’s the one position we’ve avoided any serious injury. We’ve been hurt at every other position, so it looks like it’s going to be one of those years where we’re going to be tested at every position.”