Tuukka Rask sustained one of the more devastating injuries for a goalie, and he still tried to come back to help his Boston Bruins teammates make one more run at a Stanley Cup.
The comeback effort came up short, but the fact he even tried should only positively impact his legacy.
Let’s put this in the proper context. Last season, Rask spent the better part of a few months dealing with nagging hip pain. In the past few years, he saw core pieces of the Bruins — David Krejci, Zdeno Chara, Torey Krug — head off to play elsewhere. As Rask has said, the hip pain was a hockey-exclusive injury, so it wasn’t impacting his quality of life. You couldn’t have blamed him for saying “I wish it didn’t have to end this way, but I’m going to call it a career.”
Instead, he underwent surgery, rehabbed for five-plus months and for little money made a comeback attempt — largely because he effectively grew up with Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand, and he wanted to win another Cup alongside them.
Almost more valiantly, he stepped away after four games instead of trying to continue to grind out something that wasn’t there, which ultimately could have hurt the Bruins.
So, in the end, it’s that he even tried that really matters. Rask made his money, won a Vezina, his name is on the Cup and he’s at or near the top in most major stats in Bruins goalie folklore. But it was his supreme commitment to his teammates and the city of Boston that got him to try to come back, and that should be worth a lot in the eyes of fans.
Did the on-ice results pan out as hoped in the comeback attempt? No. But what Rask put himself through over the recent months was done selflessly, and that’s the part of this that really shouldn’t be forgotten.
