WILMINGTON, Mass. – Milan Lucic never shied away from any topic during his dominant run with the Boston Bruins, so it wasn’t surprising when he joked about dropping Tuukka Rask in his first time facing the Bruins. The LA Kings power forward was quizzed by TSN 1040 in Vancouver on which Bruins player he’d go after when he played the Bruins for the first time in his nine NHL seasons.
The big left wing tried to sidestep the question, but eventually Lucic finally tapped the slender Rask after being pressed on the topic, and added he’d “maybe run through him like I did (to) another goalie that I ran into before.” Clearly Lucic was making a Ryan Miller reference after he slammed the goalie back in 2011 while he was a member of the Buffalo Sabres, and that act kicked off years of bad blood between the two divisional rivals.
It’s not expected Lucic is going to start that level of trouble with any ex-Bruin teammates given that no bad blood marred his Boston departure. Clearly Rask at least seemed to be hoping that it was indeed just a joking matter with the 6-foot-3, 230-pound bruiser. If not it could be a rather painful reunion with Lucic in a Kings uniform.
“I’m sure he was just joking,” said a smiling Rask. “But you never know. It’s a game of hockey, and it’s a physical game…things happen. I figure I’ll just be laughing because he’ll be half-joking, but we’ll see.
“It’s just the business side [with Lucic leaving], and things are going to change at some point. We were so lucky [for years] that things didn’t change for us, and we got used to it. So when things did change it was kind of a big deal because we’re not used to it. Obviously it’s going to be different with new faces, and we’ve got to recreate that team chemistry.”
The 28-year-old Rask will certainly hope it’s a positive team chemistry, so somebody in a Bruins uniform quickly comes to his defense should Lucic prove that he wasn’t half-joking when the B’s and Kings meet in early February.