Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy assumes Tuukka Rask will be ready for Wednesday night's Game 6. At least that’s what he said after Game 5.
That comment seemed to be at odds with Cassidy’s explanation just a minute earlier of why he pulled Rask for Jeremy Swayman between the second and third periods Monday night.
“There was some maintenance that needed to be done,” Cassidy said. “He wasn’t 100 percent, so we made a decision. That’s the call we had to make between periods. I’ll just say he wasn’t himself, 100 percent. Certainly could have went back in. We made a decision not to put him back in.”
We’ve known for a while that Rask is not 100 percent and that the injury that forced him to miss more than a month during the regular season has lingered. We know that because Rask and Cassidy have both said so within the last week and a half.
The question has been, how far away from 100 percent is he? For the most part, Rask has still played very well this postseason. But there were also those couple instances when he got up slowly during Game 2 of this series, although that didn’t hurt the Bruins either.
But then came Monday. Rask skipped morning skate before Game 5, opting to face a few shots on his own before the rest of the team hit the ice. That alone wasn’t necessarily a big deal. He’s done that before and gone on to play just fine that night.
This time, though, Rask didn’t play just fine. While he didn’t give up any truly soft goals, he did get beat over his glove twice for power-play goals on shots that were at least stoppable. In a game the Bruins dominated at five-on-five, they needed their goalie to be their best penalty-killer and bail out a banged-up PK group in front of him. Rask wasn’t, and didn’t. He also looked shaky playing the puck at times, something he’s usually good at.
And, most importantly, he didn’t make it through the game. He needed some “maintenance”? In the third period of Game 5 of a second-round playoff series? “Certainly could have went back in”? What are we talking about, Bruce?
Rask was pulled because he either wasn’t playing well enough or wasn’t healthy enough, or a combination of both. Regardless, it’s hard to see how anyone could “assume” anything when it comes to Rask for Game 6. (And just for the sake of clarification, it’s worth pointing out that Cassidy said he assumes Rask will be ready for Game 6, not necessarily that Rask will start Game 6.)
“Any time you have a maintenance period, which I’ve never heard of, in Game 5 of the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, there are going to be a lot of questions and certainly a lot of confusion for a lot of us,” NESN analyst and former Bruins goalie Andrew Raycroft said on The Greg Hill Show Tuesday morning.
This would be a massive challenge for Swayman, no question. Getting your first career playoff spot in an elimination game in a hostile environment like Nassau Coliseum is a tough ask. Remember that none of his 10 NHL starts in the regular season were in front of a full house, or anything close to it.
But Swayman is no bum. He was excellent in those 10 starts, going 7-3-0 with a .945 save percentage. Among goalies who played at least 300 minutes, he had the best five-on-five save percentage (.951) and best high-danger save percentage (.891) in the NHL. He had a better penalty-kill save percentage than Rask (.900 to .874).
Cassidy himself said earlier this postseason that the team would be confident in Swayman if they had to go to him for any reason. Then prove it. If there is any concern at all that Rask might not be able to make it through Game 6 or that his injury might affect his play -- and again, it’s hard to see how there wouldn’t be concerns after Monday night -- start Swayman.
Having to change goalies mid-game again would obviously not be good. Any goalie will tell you it’s better to know you’re playing and have it be your net from puck drop than to have to come in off the bench.
Having Rask’s injury affect his ability to make a save and lead to a goal against would be even worse. Goals are at a premium against the Islanders, and you don’t want to find out during an elimination game that your goalie isn’t quite able to prevent them the way he should.
“It’s hard for a goaltender to play injured,” Raycroft said. “You hear about guys, the mythology of Patrice Bergeron coming out of the hospital -- as a goaltender, that’s a lot harder to do. You can’t go up and down the wing and change your game and just get in on the forecheck, or just play good defensively. As a goaltender, you’re in or you’re not. It’s one or the other. When you’re not 100 percent, when you’re not feeling it completely, it makes your job very, very difficult. You can’t change it up.
“Whatever it is, his health has to be better for him to play Game 6 than what it was in Game 5. If he’s the same way going into Game 6 as he was going into Game 5, then I don’t think you can play him.”
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