Tuukka Rask was shaken up in the opening minutes of the third period on Thursday night.
That's foreign territory for the Bruins’ netminder, given that his blood pressure rarely spikes over the course of a contest, even amid all the ups and downs that come with serving as the last line of Boston’s defense.
But Rask needed a moment to collect himself between the pipes, opting not to glance above at the video replay hovering above him over the TD Garden ice.
Oftentimes, when a netminder surrenders a seeing-eye shot or tally off of a tumbling biscuit, the logical next step is to put the gaffe in the rearview mirror, recalibrate and remain focused on the task still at hand.
But against the Sabres, Rask wasn’t looking to burn the film of video playing overhead. At least, he certainly shouldn't have. After all, the star goalie may not make a better stop in his life.
No, for Rask — who often avoids the daily highlight reels of NHL action by playing a positionally sound, refined game in net — the rising heart rate was due to the manner in which he denied Evan Rodrigues at 4:47 in the third period.
Boston might have been holding a 3-1 edge over Buffalo, but Rodrigues liked his odds down low when it came to cutting into the deficit, especially with his club on the man advantage. With the puck skittering out to the Sabres' center, he saw plenty of open net, and a hunched over Rask, sans stick, looking to recover amid a slew of bodies down in the crease.
Rodrigues' said attempt sailed straight towards twine. But before the lamp was lit, Rask's blocker got in the way — with the puck bouncing off of the goalie's palm and out of danger.
"I didn't want to look, honestly. It was hard to, kinda," Rask said. "Because I'm not used to making saves like that. ... I was fist-bumping myself. I'm like — 'that's awesome'. I've never made a save like that. It was tougher to shake off than the bad goal. I just tried to regroup myself and focus on the next shot."
Rask tried to curb the adrenaline rush from his spot in the blue paint, but the chorus of cheers from the Garden crowd made such a task arduous. The fans were also far from the only ones bellowing praise towards the man in net.
"Oh, it was unbelievable. I was really excited on the bench," David Pastrnak said of the stop.
"That's a highlight save of the year," Brad Marchand added. "That's why he's making the big bucks."
For Chris Wagner, it was the best save he'd seen since ...
"Since ever?" the Walpole native said after a brief pause.
Even Rodrigues — denied a surefire tally in what eventually concluded as a one-goal loss for the visitors — was candid postgame.
"It's arguably the save of the year," he said. "You just tip your hat and move on. That was something else."
In the Bruins' locker room, the immediate comparison was Vegas goalie Marc-André Fleury's diving glove stop against the Maple Leafs on Tuesday night.
https://twitter.com/JesseGranger_/status/1197025105513078785?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1197025105513078785&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fweei.radio.com%2Fblogs%2Fmatt-kalman%2Ftuukka-rask-made-a-save-of-the-year-in-bruins-win
To the shock of very few — there was a clear cut favorite among the choice players interviewed when asked to pick between both saves.
“I mean that was a backhand, and I think it was going wide,” Marchand said of Fleury’s stop. “So I’ve got to give it to Tuukks. Forehand and he ripped it and he came across. And Tuuks is my boy, so I gotta give it to him.”
Rask's singular stop will get shared, streamed and retweeted into oblivion overnight, but it was far from the only time that the goalie stemmed the tide against a scoring surge from Buffalo.
"We've got him back there to save our butts, so we're lucky to have him," Marchand said. "Sometimes he has to do that a few times a game. He had to do that the whole first period."
Even though Rask was tagged with a goal against in the opening 20 minutes of play, Bruce Cassidy and his staff have to feel as though his club emerged unscathed in the first stanza, given that things could have been much, much worse.
In a horrid first period that Cassidy himself tabbed as "atypical" of his club, the Bruins found themselves outshot, 17-4. By the time a harmless point shot from Brandon Carlo hit Linus Ullmark for Boston's first shot on goal of the evening — there was 7:49 left in the period, drawing mock cheers from the seats.
But Rask stood tall amid the flurry of chances. After Rasmus Ristolainen converted on the power play at 5:25 in the period, Rask denied the next 14 shots in the first, keeping Boston afloat before Marchand tied things up at 13:52.
Rask finished the night with 36 saves on 38 shots, including 10 stops on Buffalo's 11 high-danger scoring chances.
In the minutes following the 3-2 final, Cassidy singled out Rask's compete and tracking ability, especially given the manner in which Boston's skaters failed to protect soft areas of the ice in front of the B's net. But in the end, all of the praise continued to circle back to the highway robbery he committed against Rodrigues.
"That was a Dominik Hasek save," the B's bench boss noted. "For you young people out there, he was an old goalie in the league, very acrobatic. And that’s what it was. I think everyone does get up and realize that we should have been scored on, really, I mean, we should have."
Rodrigues and the Sabres might have been scratching their heads in the third period, but Rask has had a habit of turning aside Grade-A looks this season — far above his expected average. So far this season, Rask has stopped 87 of the 95 high-danger shots that have come his way, equalling out to a hi-danger save percentage of .916.
That's far and away the tops in the league — way above Rask's mark of .812 last season — and ahead of the likes of:
Jordan Binnington — .894
Henrik Lundqvist — .863
Marc-Andre Fleury — .857
Carey Price — .835
John Gibson — .833
Yes, you may not ever see Rask make a stop like that ever again. But when it comes to eliminating quality chances, Rask has answered the call time and time again so far in the 2019-20 campaign.
"Again, that's what he's paid for," Marchand joked. "He better keep doing it."
Stats and graphs via Natural Stat Trick.