MONTREAL — Bruins goaltender Tuukka Rask hasn’t enjoyed much success against the Montreal Canadiens throughout his NHL career, and that trend continued in Boston’s 6-4 loss Thursday night at Bell Centre.
Rask, like many of his teammates, played well through the first half of the game. The B’s had a 3-2 lead with about five minutes left to play in the second period, and that’s when it all fell apart.
Defensive breakdowns resulted in the Canadiens scoring two goals — one by Jiri Sekac and the other from P.A. Parenteau — in a 1:25 span to take a lead they didn’t surrender.
“From my point of view, it was one of those nightmare nights when the bounces aren’t going your way,” Rask said.
After Brendan Gallagher’s second goal of the game at 7:17 of the third period, B’s head coach Claude Julien made a switch in net, replacing Rask with backup Niklas Svedberg.
“At that point, you’re looking for something to spark your team and maybe slow things down a little bit before the next faceoff,” Julien said. “It’s a team thing right now — there were a lot of mistakes made in front of him. Again, I’m not going to start pointing fingers at one person or one player. I’m going to look at our team, and as a team, we made too many mistakes (Thursday).”
Even though Rask wasn’t at fault for every goal Montreal scored, he didn’t play at a high enough level for the Bruins to win back-to-back games for the first time this season. Before this defeat, Rask hadn’t allowed five goals in a single game since Jan. 7.
“I don’t know, I’ve got to do something about it, you know … I’ll figure something out,” said Rask, who’s 2-3-0 with a .890 save percentage and a 2.90 GAA in five games this season. “If I had an answer, we’d probably win more games here. But you know, we’ll battle, we’ll keep battling and we’ll be stronger.”
The reigning Vezina Trophy winner entered Thursday’s contest with a regular-season record of 3-10-3, a 2.63 goals against average and a .908 save percentage in his career against the Habs. Rask struggles against the Canadiens more in Montreal than he does in Boston. In his last four starts at Bell Centre, including the three second-round playoff series games from last season, Rask is 1-3-0 with an .890 save percentage and a 3.19 GAA.
The B’s, for a variety of reasons, play much worse against the Canadiens compared to most other teams; Boston is 5-9-3 in its last 17 games versus Montreal, including the playoffs.
Fair or not, the B’s need Rask to play at a Vezina Trophy-caliber level until they figure out how to fix the mental and physical breakdowns that often occur against the Canadiens. Rask is signed through 2020-21, and these fierce rivals likely will meet in the postseason quite a bit in the near future as a result of the NHL’s new divisional playoff format.
If Rask isn’t the best, or at least one of the best players on the ice for the Bruins, it’s difficult to envision them winning many future games against Montreal based on recent results.
Photo via Eric Bolte/USA TODAY Sports Images
