Tuukka Rask Is The Boston Bruins Starting Goalie

To put it nicely, Tuukka Rask didn’t look good in the Boston Bruins season opening 7–0 loss to the Washington Capitals. The Finnish goalie let in five goals on 19 shots before being pulled in favor of Jaroslav Halak. After his yanking, the “bench Tuukka” and “trade Tuukka” shouts began from some Bruins “faithful” fans. So let me says this….everybody calm down. Tuukka Rask is the starting goalie for the Bruins and he’ll be fine.

Were San Jose Sharks fans losing their minds when Martin Jones gave up five goals in their season opener? How about Vegas Golden Knights fans or Pittsburgh Penguins fans when Marc-Andre Fleury and Matt Murray gave up five and six goals respectively? My point is that bad games happen for goalies. Every goalie experiences bumps in the road over an 82 game slate.

To be quite honest, the “trade Tuukka” gig is getting old. The guy can’t play a bad game without people looking to ship him out of town and replace him with a borderline starting goalie. It’s wild that a man who’s got five consecutive 30-win seasons and a man that’ll be setting the franchise record for wins is so doubted by supporters of his own team.

Rask has three years left on an eight year contract worth $56,000,000. Since signing that contract no goalie in the NHL has played more games than Rask. Amongst NHL goalies that have played at least 100 games over the last five seasons, Tuukka ranks 2nd in wins, 2nd in shutouts, 5th in GAA, and T7 in save %. To sum it up, those are pretty good numbers.

Is Tuukka Rask the best goalie in the league? No he’s not. But I challenge somebody to find a better option for the Bruins right now. Jaroslav Halak isn’t the answer in net for the Bruins. Anton Khudobin wasn’t the answer. Both of those men are solid backups, but they aren’t the guys that would put the Bruins over the hump. So let’s stop with the “Halak should be the the starter” or the “Should’ve re-signed Khudobin” crap. Tuukka Rask is the starting goalie for the Boston Bruins. If you don’t like it then go find another bandwagon to hop on.

Kevin Maggiore (@kevin_maggiore)