BOSTON – It wasn’t perfect for Tuukka Rask against the Dallas Stars.
But it was good enough for Rask and the Bruins to pull out a 2-1 overtime win over the Stars at TD Garden on Monday night, and that was really all that mattered when it was all said and done. Rask let up a really soft shorthanded goal less than four minutes into the game, and was a little shaky in a first period where the Bruins really dominated play.
But after Radek Faksa beat him from just inside the blue line on a puck that was deflected by Torey Krug’s stick, Rask settled down and stopped the final 24 shots that he faced. That’s exactly what the goalie and his hockey club needed.
“[Rask] needs wins,” said Bruce Cassidy. “He’s a goalie. That’s what he gets judged on, alright, so the first goal is an outside shot from a bad angle. I don’t know if Torey [Krug] redirected it, but [it was] good for the guys to pick him up right away on the power play. We win as a team and we lose as a team. We’ve always felt that way.
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“After that, he settled in, Tuukka [Rask], played well, made a nice stop there in overtime. He wasn’t that busy, so it was a good day for him to sort of get his bearings again. He hadn’t played in a while. I don’t know how used to he is to not playing that much. But at the end of the day, yes, he needed the win, and he got it. So, hopefully better things for him the next time he’s in.”
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Certainly it could have gone wrong when it was a 1-1 game for the final 40 plus minutes of regulation, and it very nearly did when Rask inexplicably threw a puck to Valeri Nichushkin in the slot while in the middle of killing a Dallas power play.
But instead Rask never had that second slip up, made some really good saves along the way and maybe, just maybe, is starting to regain the mentality he needs to get into one of his hot streaks. Clearly it couldn’t have been easy for Rask to sit for the last 10 days and watch Jaroslav Halak start three of the last four games while leading the NHL in goals against average and save percentage through the first month of the regular season.
But perhaps all of that has also acted as the regular season alarm clock that Rask needed after a “meh” October.
“I felt good,” said Rask. “There have been some funky goals I’ve let in. I felt pretty good so that part hasn’t really changed or affected me. Obviously when you’re not playing you have time to think, that might get tough on you. But as I said that’s the mental battle I’m trying to win with myself, be sharp out there. Tight game like today, I thought we were the better team. [Ex-Bruin Anton] Khudobin (who was in net for Dallas) kept them in the game there and I just try to give us a chance to win. I’m happy it paid off today.
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“The schedule hasn’t been crazy and Jaro has played unbelievable, that’s how it goes. If you’re a hot goalie like that then you got to let him play. I totally get it. It hasn’t affected me mentally really that much. You just try to practice hard and feel that rhythm and feel the puck in practice, when you’re playing try to put your best out there and get the wins.”
So how do things play out for Rask in the short term? Well, certainly he’ll get one of the games this weekend when the Bruins are playing Toronto and Vegas at home back-to-back. But the expectation should be that Halak plays Thursday against Vancouver and Saturday night in a big deal game against the rival Maple Leafs, and that Rask will get back in there Sunday night against the Golden Knights on the second night of the back-to-back.
That’s the new world order for the Bruins goaltending tandem right now, and that’s probably not going to change until things slow down with the 1.45 goals against average and .952 save percentage that Halak is lugging around right now. Rask was good in victory, but certainly needs to string a few more of those together to push Halak back to oft-used understudy status.
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