Bruce Cassidy has tried to avoid playing a goalie on back-to-back days as much as possible during his three-plus seasons as Bruins coach.
There are a couple reasons for that. One is that he has wanted to keep Tuukka Rask fresh during the regular season, and playing him back-to-back nights doesn't accomplish that.
He has been able to stick to that plan because the Bruins have had very good backup goalies -- first Anton Khudobin in 2017-18 and now Jaroslav Halak the last two years -- who have been able to step in and give the Bruins quality goaltending with little to no dropoff.
Another is that Rask has often struggled in the second night of back-to-backs, so if the Bruins have another fresh goalie that they have confidence in, it makes all the sense in the world to keep Rask away from back-to-backs.
The result is that Rask has played back-to-back days just twice since Cassidy took over as coach -- once in March 2017 while Cassidy still had the interim tag after taking over for Claude Julien, and once this past February when Halak was a little banged up. It's a small sample size, but Rask had an .878 save percentage in the second games of those back-to-backs and the Bruins lost both.
Why is all of this important? Because the Bruins now have at least one and possibly two back-to-backs in their first-round series against the Hurricanes, meaning the chances of Halak getting a start or two in this series, regardless of how well Rask plays, are going up.
Games 5 and 6 were already a scheduled back-to-back for next Wednesday and Thursday if the series goes that long. But now Games 1 and 2 are also a back-to-back with Game 1 getting postponed from Tuesday night to Wednesday at 11 a.m. thanks to the five-overtime game that was played between the Lightning and Blue Jackets in Toronto on Tuesday. All told, the Bruins and Hurricanes could now play six games in nine days.
This first back-to-back is obviously a little bit different, as going from an 11 a.m. game to an 8 p.m. game isn't quite the same as, say, going 7 p.m. to 7 p.m. Asked about what his plan might be Tuesday night, Cassidy said he and his staff would see how Game 1 plays out and then make a decision, but it certainly sounds like Halak starting Game 2 is a real possibility.
"We're going to let the game play out first," Cassidy said. "The good news about the back-to-back, there is a day and a half, not quite, there's an 11 o'clock game and an 8 o'clock game. Little more rest. There's no travel involved so it may depend on the workload of Tuukka. Obviously we'll discuss it with him.
"We're very comfortable with both goaltenders. I've heard (Carolina coach Rod Brind'Amour) say on the other side, he proved it, he used both goaltenders against the Rangers. So I don't think it'll be an issue for him either. It's two teams that typically use both goaltenders, so that's a bit of a fortunate break for both teams."
When asked about the same topic earlier in the day Tuesday, Cassidy acknowledged that, "In general, no, we don't do it." But we don't really know if that also applies to the playoffs, because the Bruins haven't had playoff games on back-to-back days since he took over.
The last time Rask played back-to-back days in the postseason was Games 6 and 7 of the first round in 2013. Rask gave up four goals in that Game 7, but as you may recall, the Bruins came back from 4-1 down to beat the Maple Leafs in overtime.
Rask himself said last month that he didn't expect any goalie to play every minute of every game this postseason, like he did last year, given the unique circumstances and limited ramp-up time.
The combination of that mindset and Cassidy's tried-and-true strategy of avoiding back-to-back starts for goalies would seemingly increase the chances of Halak getting a start or two with the Bruins now facing at least one and maybe two back-to-backs right off the bat.
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