BRIGHTON, Mass – It remains very unclear what exactly is pulling Tuukka Rask away from the Bruins right now.
What we do know is that Rask asked for a leave of absence from his job as the Bruins No. 1 goaltender and that it relates to a personal matter. We also know that Rask is having an awful season by his standards (4-4-0, 3.05 goals-against average and .901 save percentage).
He’d already begun to lose playing time to the red-hot Jaroslav Halak and has looked distracted in his period-to-period focus, has been sloppy with his technique guarding the short-side post and has been generally giving up at least one soft goal per outing, which is far below expectations for a goalie making $7 million per season.
Things finally came to a head when he was touched up for three goals on 14 shots in mop-up duty Thursday night in an 8-5 blowout loss to the Canucks. He joked rather oddly afterward that he “was just trying to keep it under 10 [goals allowed] -- that’s what I was worried about” and then was missing from the practice ice roughly 10 hours later.
The Bruins paid full respect to Rask’s privacy by keeping quiet on the nature of his particular situation, but they also voiced their support fo him while he’s away from a team that still clearly needs operating at full efficiency.
“We respect it. It’s obviously very important. We support [Rask’s] decision. Hopefully it’s going to be solved soon and he’ll be back with us,” said Chara. “Obviously we miss him. He’s our teammate and he’s our brother. He’s been here for a long time.
“But like I said, we all understand and respect his privacy. In his absence we support him and think of him, and we’ll obviously need to play without him. We’re looking forward to having him back.”
Boston Bruins
Bruins GM Don Sweeney stressed that the leave of absence wasn’t health-related and it underscores a complicated situation with him. There’s no doubt the Bruins are tiring of the goalie’s underperformance and inconsistency and might even be seeking to trade him for some scoring help if Rask didn’t have strong no-trade protection in his contract.
Couple that with it often talked about that Rask requires mental rest along with physical rest in the regular season and he's been scaled back to a 55-60 game workload in order to get his peak performance. As recently as earlier this week, Rask talked about the fact he wasn’t winning the mental battle in being a frontline goaltender this season. It certainly seems as if something, or some kind of distraction, has been hindering him from playing at his best.
“There’s probably just some clutch in your head that just switches,” said Rask after his win over Dallas, when asked what needs to change for him to get into a hot streak. “Just try to have fun and let the puck hit you. A lot of goaltending is mental, everybody in the league has the skill to play at a high level. A lot of times you either win or lose the battle inside your head, I’m trying to win it.”
The goalie’s comments would imply that Rask wasn’t winning the battle inside his head as much this season and that he wasn’t really having much fun out there. That would seem to be backed up by his extremely subpar performance through the first month of the season and now by the news Rask is stepping away from the team to clear up a bothersome situation.
At the end of the day, it’s about Rask first as a person and making certain that everything is right with both him and his family. That's much higher on the importance scale than how many pucks he stopped against Vancouver. It comes into play when discussing the vagueness of “relating to a personal matter.” Perhaps some time away will clear up whatever seems to be distracting Rask and he’ll return to the B’s a better goaltender for it in the end.
For now though, the Bruins and Rask finally seem to be admitting there’s some kind of problem with his distracted play this season and are now going about finding a way to solve it for both the team and goalie.