Try hard for one second not to let recency bias cloud your judgement, and you’ll find that Tuukka Rask has been nails for the Boston Bruins this postseason pretty much wire-to-wire.
Couple that with him saying that if he’s on the ice and playing, he’s healthy enough to be there and, well, it’s hard to argue against playing him Wednesday night.
That’s exactly what the Boston Bruins are doing, and it’s the right call.
The Bruins are trying to keep their season alive Wednesday when they face the New York Islanders in Game 6 of their second-round Stanley Cup Playoff series. There was concern that Rask, who didn’t play in the third period of Game 5 for what was described as injury maintenance, might not be available.
But Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy hardly seemed concerned on gameday, saying Rask was healthy and good to go.
That is the only factor that matters.
Jeremy Swayman looks like the real deal and has a bright NHL future. But the Bruins have to go with the guy that got them there, and make no mistake, Rask has helped get the Bruins there. There’s a non-zero chance that Boston already would’ve been eliminated if not for the play of Rask when things were tight in Game 1, or in overtime of Game 3.
And if you’re Cassidy, you also have to take into account the message it sends to your team if you bench the goalie who has been there forever and gotten you through numerous playoff runs, including the current one, when he’s healthy. An awful one, and one that reeks of desperation. The players already know their season is on the line, no need to make a rash decision.
Not only that, this is not exactly a fair situation to thrust Swayman into. He hasn’t started a game in a month, and he hasn’t been an NHL regular for a long time. Swayman wouldn’t have beaten out Jaroslav Halak if he wasn’t ready when called upon, but there’s still a level of situational thinking that has to go into these types of decisions — especially when Cassidy isn’t forced to play Swayman right now.
A counterargument is the ramifications of Rask not being fully healthy and getting hurt, because then the Bruins would just be left with Swayman and no backup goalie for the rest of the game. That’s legitimate, but at the same time you can’t dictate your decisions in the playoffs based on fear or hypotheticals. If Rask says he’s healthy, and he’s given the indication that he’s a forthright person regarding his health, you’ve got to play him.
It should be no coincidence that those with some weird agenda against a perennial Vezina candidate are the ones saying they should’ve gone with Swayman. Dismiss that. The Bruins are making the right decision, they’ve got to live and die with Rask here.
And if they do lose Wednesday, they can at least hang their hat on the fact that they made the right call in net.
