With Tuukka Rask likely to return Thursday, Bruins dodge a major bullet for stretch run

It certainly wasn’t the note that the Bruins wanted to enter the bye week on — leaving a pair of points on the board against a rebuilding Rangers club outside of the playoff picture and boasting a minus-26 goal differential.

Seeing your starting goalie get bowled over didn’t make things any better. Based on the optics, it didn’t look good for Tuukka Rask back on Jan. 19.

After Filip Chytil collided with Rask in the crease, the B’s netminder remained down on the ice for at least a minute — eventually heading down the tunnel after some assistance from Charlie McAvoy and David Pastrnak.

Before the contest even ended, the Bruins announced what many expected — a concussion for Rask, his second in the past two seasons.

It was tough luck for Rask, who was in the midst of his best stretch of the season after another sluggish start to the 2018-19 campaign (4-4-0, .901 save percentage through eight games) — and another roadblock for a Bruins club currently treading water with a 2-2-2 showing over the last two weeks.

But, in the grand scheme of things, the timing actually ended up working out in favor of the Bruins and Rask. Of course, the B’s goalie would rather have spent his time off without concussion symptoms lingering over him.

But a few vacation days down in the Caribbean was a much better alternative than sitting out as Boston tries to stay ahead of the pack in a cutthroat Eastern Conference.



"I didn't have too bad of headaches, it was just mostly sickness and nausea, that was the biggest part of it,” Rask said Wednesday at Warrior Ice Arena. “Good thing about it was we had the break. If you’re laying under the sun for five days, you’re gonna feel a whole lot of nothing. I think that probably was the best thing for it.”

Despite sitting out of Tuesday’s shootout loss to the Jets, Rask seems to be on track to only miss that one game due to his concussion. The vet practiced with the rest of the team without any setbacks on Wednesday — putting him in line for a likely start Thursday against the Flyers.

“Good chance,” Bruce Cassidy said of the likelihood of Rask’s return Thursday. "Normally I'll announce the day before, let's see how he does in the morning. It was his first full practice. We want to make sure there's no fatigue and whatnot. He missed some time. Assuming he's ready to go and feels good about everything, good chance he'll get in.”

Given the speed at which Chytil slammed into Rask — as well as the goalie’s staggered reaction — the Bruins have to be doing back-flips that their netminder’s absence was only limited to five total periods of hockey.

The Bruins know all too well that the recovery timetable when it comes to concussions can vary from just a couple days to a span of months — something that Charlie McAvoy and Urho Vaakanainen can certainly attest to.

But for Rask, who suffered a similar ailment last October after getting knocked down by Anders Bjork during practice, there weren’t too many surprises when comparing this concussion to last season’s.

“You never know what’s going to happen when you have a concussion,” Rask said. “I think the biggest thing I noticed is that you don’t want to fight it in your own head too much. If you feel off, you feel off, and don’t make anything out of it. Just rest.

"A lot of times when you start overthinking it, trying to figure out if I’m feeling bad or not, next thing you know you screw yourself and then just feel bad even though you don’t. “The good thing, like I said, was we had the break and I got to just chill out for a few days and really wind down, so it helped a lot.”

Even if the Bruins opt to go conservative and hold out Rask until Sunday’s matinee against the Capitals, Boston has to be counting its blessings — given both the upcoming stretch for the club and Jaroslav Halak’s recent downturn.

For as fantastic as Halak was to open the season (.947 save percentage in October) while Rask struggled, the veteran netminder has struggled with each new month — including an .863 save percentage in January. Over his last 12 matchups, Halak has let up three or more goals in eight of them. Not ideal.

During that same stretch since the start of the new year, Rask is 5-0-1 with a .941 save percentage — including a shutout showing against the Wild back on Jan. 8.

When looking at Goals Saved Above Expected — a stat that calculates both the “expected” amount of goals that should be generated by the opposition and subtracts the actual goals allowed by that netminder — Rask is in a good spot, ranking 10th with a GS Ax of 2.54. That means that Rask has stopped over two more goals than he was expected to, given the quality of some of the shots generated by an opponent.



That puts him ahead of other starters such as Vegas’ Marc-Andre Fleury and Nashville’s Pekka Rinne, while Halak’s recent skid has dropped him to 12th overall in terms of GS Ax.  

Evaluating goalies can be an arduous task, and obviously goes far beyond stats such as wins, losses and goals-against average. But it’s becoming clear that the Bruins are going to need Rask to be healthy and operating at a high level if they want to avoid clawing for a wild-card spot come late March.