Tuukka Rask finally addresses those rumors regarding missed game in 2016

BOSTON -- For all of the star athletes to come through the city of Boston over the years, few have been as divisive among fans and media than Tuukka Rask. Opinions on the retired goaltender were so strong that one crackerjack writer once said it's always best to avoid discussing politics, religion and Tuukka Rask when seated among mixed company. Tempers were always liable to flare up when Rask's name was invoked, and there were certainly some friendships that were irreparably harmed as a result of the passionate arguments that ensued.

One such moment that led to a staining of Rask's legacy in Boston was the final regular-season game of the 2015-16. The Bruins needed a win to make the playoffs, but Rask bowed out of the game due to illness. Jonas Gustavsson started in net instead of Rask, and he allowed four goals on 34 shots. The Bruins lost 6-1.

Now, even though Rask has started 104 playoff games, and even though Rask has the best playoff save percentage in NHL history among goalies with at least 100 games played, and even though he's won the fourth-most playoff games of any goalie since the 2003-04 lockout, this missed game has served as a sort of line of demarcation for certain segments of the fanbase. This game -- a regular-season contest against the Ottawa Senators, played at 12:30 in the afternoon for a Bruins team that had won just three games more than it had lost all year -- served as a sort of measuring stick for Rask's entire career. 

The story, as some would tell it, is that Rask was too scared to play in this game, so he feigned an illness to get out of having to play in this pressure-packed game before heading to a local spot to scarf down some buffalo wings after the season-ending loss.

Now seven years later, Rask faced some rather direct questions about the incident. And he delivered some detailed answers that had only been loosely speculated over the years.

"Hey, is the story from Buff's true?" Mike Grinnell of the Spittin' Chiclets podcast asked Rask after a recent interview, in a video posted this week. (Language warning on that.) "Did you [poop] yourself during the game?"

"What?!" Rask replied.

Rask was asked if the rumor of him eating chicken wings at Buff's Pub hours after the loss was true.

"I went to Buff's like five days before that," Rask answered.

Rask said the rumor "[bleeping] caught fire" but was not true.

"I got sick at like 5 a.m. that morning and we had a 12:30 game. But yeah, no Buff's," Rask said. "I was puking and [pooping]."

Back in 2016, Rask told reporters that he had been sick, saying he couldn't even stand up that day. But he understandably didn't face such blunt questions from the assembled media in the locker room. Now the record has been set a bit straighter.