Fans often wonder what motivates a goalie to want to stop 100-mile-an-hour slapshots. For Tuukka Rask, it’s all about the heavy guitar crunch, growling vocals and quadruple-bass of Finnish death metal.
The Bruins’ 26-year-old netminder was recently interviewed on his unique musical tastes by Mick Stingley of Esquire. Rask was born in Savonlinna, Finland, and played hockey with several minor and major league clubs in the Scandinavian country before he joined the Providence Bruins for the 2007-08 season. Rask has lived in the US since then, but there’s one staple of his native country he can’t live without.
“Power metal,” said Rask. “The guitar playing is just unbelievable. I like [the] aggressiveness a lot.”
Rask named Children of Bodom — “the music really gets you going” — H.I.M. — “very dark rock” — and Amorphis — “it’s kind of melodic and kind of hard, too” — as some of his favorite Finnish metal bands.
Unfortunately, there aren’t many other headbangers among his teammates.
“I tried to play that in the locker room and people were like, ‘What the [expletive] is this?’ because it sounds like opera singing,” Rask said. “I’m pretty much banned from the DJ job because I like to mix in some Finnish heavy metal tunes and the guys really don’t like that. So I just put on my headphones sometimes and keep it to myself.”
They can complain about his taste in music, but nobody is complaining about his performance on the ice. If Rask can backstop the Bruins to another deep playoff run this season, he may be allowed to sneak some tunes in on the stereo.
