Cup Or No Cup, Tuukka Rask Was Great
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- To be 100 percent honest, it's extremely difficult to get a proper read on how the city of Boston feels about Tuukka Rask. That's always been the case.
On the one hand, there are legions of fans who adore the goaltender, appreciate his ability as one of the best netminders on the planet for more than a decade, and have enjoyed bellowing TUUUUUUUUK at the TD Garden whenever the Finn made a big stop for the Bruins.
On the other hand, there's a vocal, passionate group that has long detested the player and the person, casting aspersions about his competitiveness and commitment while insisting that he lacks the ability to play well in big moments. This group may be fundamentally wrong -- playing at an elite level among the best hockey players in the world for a dozen-plus years requires an extraordinary level of dedication, and countless "big games" are always overlooked to arrive at this conclusion -- but it nevertheless exists at a rather loud level and has for a long time.
That, really, for better or worse, fairly or unfairly, will come to define Tuukka Rask's legacy in Boston.
In fairness, the muddiness could have been avoided had Rask and the Bruins won the Stanley Cup, either in 2013 or 2019, when they came oh-so-close to getting it done. Alas, the Blackhawks scored twice in 17 seconds to dramatically end the 2013 Cup Final and stun the Bruins on their own ice, and the Bruins offered a team-wide dud in Game 7 of the Cup Final against the Blues in 2019. So the only Cup on Rask's résumé came when he spent the entire postseason on the bench behind Tim Thomas.
In a bottom line industry, where the end result often matters more than the details, that's just how it will be. Much like a quarterback in football, the goaltender often receives an inordinate amount of credit for success and a disproportionate amount of blame for defeats. And like any sport, the defeats come around more often than the championships.
Of course, in 2013 and 2019, Rask played as good if not better than Thomas did in 2011.
Thomas, 2011: 16-9, .940 save percentage, 1.98 GAA, 4 SO
Rask, 2013: 14-8, .940 save percentage, 1.88 GAA, 3 SO
Rask, 2019: 15-9, .934 save percentage, 2.02 GAA, 2 SO
He's also a better goalie than Corey Crawford, Jordan Binnington, Matt Murray, Antti Niemi, Cam Ward, Nikolai Khabibulin, and surely some other Cup-winning goalies. He just doesn't have the Cup to show for it.
But the sport of hockey is a beautiful one, and it is a team game. So those who want to hold the lack of Cup against Rask for whatever reason will always have that card available.
To everyone else, it wasn't difficult to see the greatness of Rask. It was rather hard to miss.
When Rask was on, he was on, seeing everything sent his way and nonchalantly dismissing pucks into corners. His game was sound if not flashy, which surely affected public perception of his ability, but the results spoke for themselves.
It was evident early, when he led the league with a .931 save percentage and 1.97 GAA as a rookie in the 2009-10 season, stealing Thomas' starting job along the way and looking like the future of the organization in net. Of course, the Flyers found some holes in Rask's game that postseason, Thomas returned from hip surgery at age 35 like a new man the following year, and the veteran goalie led the franchise to its first Cup in 39 years. The Rask era had to wait.
Once Thomas left the Bruins, Rask took the reins and never really let go. He had a .929 save percentage and 2.00 GAA in the shortened 2013 season, before the tremendous postseason run. Rask had bet on himself that year, opting to play on a one-year, $3.5 million deal as a restricted free agent. Suffice it to say, he earned himself a lot of money with his performance.
The Penguins led the league that year by a wide margin with 162 goals (Chicago ranked second with 149), and they also were the No. 1 seed in the East by a significant margin (Pittsburgh had 72 standings points; Montreal ranked second in the East with 63). Pittsburgh looked like a juggernaut through two rounds, going 8-3 and outscoring opponents 49-28.
But after the Penguins averaged 4.5 goals per game that postseason, Rask held them to just two goals total, posting shutouts to bookend the four-game sweep in the conference finals. (The conference finals against the top team in the East is a series of big games, contrary to popular belief.) He stopped 53 of 54 shots in a double-overtime win in Game 3 to give Boston a commanding 3-0 series lead. Overall, Rask stopped 134 of 136 Pittsburgh shots that series, good for a .985 save percentage and a 0.44 GAA.
The ending of the Cup Final vs. Chicago is well known, but Rask was still the better goaltender in that series, posting a .932 save percentage compared to Corey Crawford's .925. Rask posted a shutout in Game 3, too, which also constituted a "big game." The Bruins lost a wild back-and-forth affair in Game 4 (Rask allowed six goals but also stopped 41 shots), then scored once while losing in Game 5, before the infamous Game 6. (Those were very legitimate goals, for the record, and they weren't instances of a goaltender "choking." If Kaspars Daugavins and Chris Kelly handle their empty-net opportunities better, Game 6 never even happens.)
Rask won the Vezina the following season, when he went 36-15-6 with a .930 save percentage, 2.04 GAA. He led the league in shutouts (with 7) for the second straight year as the Bruins earned the Presidents' Trophy. But the Canadiens -- Rask's bugaboo for a long time -- got the best of him in the playoffs.
The shot at real postseason redemption didn't come for Rask until the spring of 2019. He certainly did all he could to deliver a Cup to Boston.
Tuukka Rask, 2019 Playoffs
vs. Toronto: 4-3, .928 save percentage, 2.32 GAA
G7 vs Toronto: 32 saves on 33 shotsvs. Columbus: 4-2, .948 save percentage, 1.71 GAA
G6 vs. Columbus: 39-save shutout on the roadvs. Carolina: 4-0, .956 save percentage, 1.25 GAA
G4 vs. Carolina: 24-save shutout on the roadvs. St. Louis: 3-4, .912 save percentage, 2.44 GAA
The Bruins averaged just 1.5 goals per game in their four losses that series, failing to score in Game 7 on home ice until the 17:50 mark of the third period. Had Rask bailed out Brad Marchand for his ill-timed line change late in the first and stopped Alex Pietrangelo, perhaps it's a different story. But really, the story coming out of that Game 7 no-show from Boston -- in a series where their 41-year-old captain was playing with his jaw wired shut -- had little to do with the goaltender. Or at least, it shouldn't have.
The Game 6 that preceded the Game 7 always gets lost, too. With the Blues on the brink of winning a championship on their home ice, with the Cup itself within the city limits of St. Louis, Rask ensured that the keepers never had to remove it from the hotel. Rask stopped 28 of 29 shots while facing elimination in a raucous arena, the lone goal barely trickling over the line. There would never have even been a Game 7 if Rask hadn't carried the Bruins on that night.
So Rask never won a Cup, no. He does retire with the best postseason save percentage of all time, among goaltenders with at least 100 playoff games played. His .925 playoff save percentage is better than Hall of Famers like Dominik Hasek, Patrick Roy, Ed Belfour and Martin Brodeur, and better than future Hall of Famer Henrik Lundqvist. His team may not have won Cups with him in the crease, but Tuukka Rask was not afraid of the big game.
Perhaps what's even better than Rask's goaltending has been his ability to never fall victim to the level of criticism heaped upon him. He accepted it as part of the drop and always embraced Boston, going so far as to declare the Bruins the only team he'd even consider playing for after returning from surgery this season.
Twice in his career, Rask summed up his overall feeling regarding ... all that comes with playing goalie in this town.
In May of 2013, after the Bruins' unforgettable overtime victory in Game 7 against Toronto, Rask said, "It's do or die. You're either a hero or an a--hole."
In May of 2014, Rask said simply, "When you suck, you suck."
He'd never write a long story about the near-misses and big performances. He's more easily shrug his shoulders and say "that's life."
A modern-day Yogi Berra, in some respects.
Now, unfortunately for Rask, his career is ending prematurely. Unlike the mid-30s rejuvenation that Thomas received from his own hip surgery, Rask's body is tapping out a month shy of his 35th birthday.
That untimely ending will prevent Rask from adding to his spot atop the Bruins' all-time leaderboard for wins, saves and games played. But it shouldn't diminish the level of excellence that Rask delivered for the Bruins over 668 games, spread out from November of 2007 through January of 2022. Perhaps as time goes on, and the franchise lacks the stellar goaltending it got from Thomas and Rask for 15 years, the rare excellence of that run will crystallize for anyone who might have missed it.
Still, even now, there should be no question. Tuukka Rask, a Bruin from start to finish, was great. It really is that simple.
You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.