Patrice Bergeron will face a big decision this offseason, and he's already gotten some advice from Tuukka Rask on how to approach it.
The Boston Bruins captain will be a free agent after the current season, at which point he'll have to decide if he wants to continue his playing career or retire. It's not totally clear which way he's leaning since he said before the season that he was tabling all those decisions until this summer.
Rask was a free agent with an uncertain future this past offseason, so he knows what Bergeron will go through. Rask, after getting offseason hip surgery, signed with the Bruins officially on Tuesday and will play out the rest of this season before reassessing his future.
He thinks his approach was a pretty good idea.
"I told Bergy a couple weeks ago to do what I did," Rask said Wednesday over Zoom. "Just wait until halfway through the season to sign and then he can take some time off. He's played a lot of hockey."
Indeed, Wednesday's game against the Montreal Canadiens will be regular season game No. 1,175 for Bergeron, who has another 160 postseason games to his name, too. Barring injury, he'll have logged well over 1,200 games by the time this season concludes.
So, hey, maybe Rask is onto something there. Time will tell if he's become a trendsetter.
