Could Rask's standing as Bruins' No. 1 goalie be in jeopardy?

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Tuukka Rask hasn’t outright lost his No. 1 job with the Bruins at this point, but he’s certainly playing like he wants to.

The longtime Bruins netminder has an .875 save percentage through the first four games of this season, and outright hasn’t given the Bruins any chance to win in two of those four games with bad performances against Washington and Calgary. He also watched on Saturday night as backup Jaroslav Halak made his second straight start while Rask sat on the bench. Halak played well enough to get the Bruins a point in the 2-1 overtime loss to the Canucks, and stopped 20-of-22 shots after similarly getting a point in another OT loss in Edmonton last week.

Overall Halak has a 2-0-2 record with a .933 save percentage for the Bruins, and has picked up points in four of his appearances while outplaying Rask to this early point in the season.

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The expectation is that Rask is going to get the start on Tuesday night against the Ottawa Senators, and Bruce Cassidy admitted that’s the way he was leaning with his choice while stopping short of announcing it officially. So the Bruins No. 1 goalie hasn’t been “benched” at this point in favor of his backup, but it sure looks like Rask and Halak are splitting up playing time at much closer to a 50/50 clip than anybody could have guessed.

Clearly the Bruins coaching staff isn’t ready to simply give Halak an extended run and saddle Rask with a baseball cap on the bench, but that time gets closer to reality with each outing where the Finnish goaltender isn’t up to par. If Rask again goes out and gives up three or four goals in the first period on Tuesday night, could the Bruins go with Halak for a run of three or four games similar to the one Anton Khudobin went on in November last season?

It may still be early for that to happen given that the Bruins want both of their goalies to get into a healthy midseason rhythm before they start sitting one of them for a couple of weeks at a time. But there’s a lot riding on Rask’s performance on Tuesday night against an Ottawa Senators team that’s been better than anybody could have expected going into this season.

The good news is that Rask has already beaten this Senators bunch once this season when he stopped 28-of-31 shots and played reasonably well for one of his two wins this year. But there will be a little more pressure on him this time around as Halak has been up to the task in the Bruins goalie competition to date, and once again Rask has been slow to get going for a suddenly injury-ravaged B’s hockey club that needs all the help it can get.  

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