Every goalie, no matter how good, is going to have an occasional bad game, even in the playoffs. It happens. What's important is how that goalie responds the next game. The best bounce back and make sure that bad game doesn't carry over, but problems really start to arise if bad games start piling up on top of each other.
That's why Jaroslav Halak's performance in the Bruins' series-clinching 2-1 win Wednesday was so encouraging. After giving up three very stoppable goals in Game 4, he stopped 23 of the 24 shots he faced in Game 5. While that's not a particularly heavy workload, he did have to deal with quite a bit of traffic around the net and make some tough saves at key times.
Appearing on Dale and Keefe, with Andy Hart filling in for Rich Keefe, former Bruins goalie and current NESN analyst Andrew Raycroft said that was exactly the kind of performance you needed to see from Halak. (Listen to the full interview here.)
"He was very good last night, battled," Raycroft said. "It wasn't an easy game. Carolina was throwing everything at the net. The Bruins didn't start off great in the first. Giving up that first goal as well makes it difficult on a goaltender. That pressure amps up not to give up the second one. Jaro made a great save on Justin Williams in the first coming across the net. Like I said, he was battling, he was grinding. Not surprised that he bounced back. He's been around a long time and understands the importance of that bounce-back game."
Now the Bruins will have at least several days before they start the second round, which may not begin until Tuesday or Wednesday. The whole team has Thursday completely off, but then they'll be able to get in a few full practices, something they didn't have too many of during the first round given the compressed schedule.
The whole team should benefit, as it will give them more time to build all facets of their game, but Raycroft explained why he thinks Halak, who has only been the team's clear No. 1 goalie since Saturday, in particular will really benefit from some additional practice time and focused work with goalie coach Bob Essensa.
"He's going to get better, there's no question," Raycroft said. "With rest he's going to get better. He's going to feel the game much better in the next series. Having these five days to be able to really work on goalie-specific things with Goalie Bob and to be able to really do game-like activities rather than just trying to get a workout in and stay sharp with your conditioning. Now he can really think about game situations, what he wants to work on these next few days. So I expect him to get better, just like everyone else on the team. I expect the Bruins as a whole to get better, and Jaro's no different."
Despite the rough Game 4, Halak still wrapped up the series with a 3-0 record and .932 save percentage. If Raycroft is right and Halak continues to improve and gets more consistent, the Bruins should be in pretty good shape.
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