Boston Bruins: Zdeno Chara, Tuukka Rask Set Stage For Self-Imposed Meltdown

Remember exactly how Boston Bruins’ goaltender Tuukka Rask drew widespread notoriety a year before “Tuukka Time” became an operative slogan? Before he was a league leader in goals-against average and save percentage as a rookie in his first full NHL season?

If not, it was on March 20, 2009, in the aftermath of a Providence Bruins 1-0 shootout loss to the Albany River Rats at the Dunkin Donuts Center. Believing that at least one, if not both of the Rats’ deciding lightning-round strikes was illegitimate, Rask went into an enraged frenzy.

In a public venting spree that wasted no time finding multiple slots on YouTube, Rask slammed his stick against the boards before hurling it across the width of the rink. Seconds later, he picked up a puck-holding crate in the P-Bruins runway and lobbed that onto the ice as well.

Less than two months later, in Game 4 of a Calder Cup playoff series, Rask literally went out of his way, as in several strides ahead of any hashmarks, to body-check a Worcester Shark.

At that point, Rask had already won three out of five NHL appearances over the course of two calendar seasons. It was bush-league episodes like this that Boston general manager Peter Chiarelli was confidently hoping to see the last of when Manny Fernandez was on his way out the door, leaving a spot open expressly for Rask.

Regrettably, the vintage, overly spiced Rask revived himself late in the second period of Tuesday night’s clash with the Carolina Hurricanes (the defunct River Rats’ former parent club, no less). When Bruins’ captain Zdeno Chara was confronted by Carolina stopper Cam Ward after brawling with Jay Harrison, Rask hustled to his towering blueliner’s aid.

One period later, only after Rich Peverley had splashed the power play unit’s five-game scoring drought, Nathan Horton followed in his captain’s and goalie’s foolhardy footsteps. With 8:30 to spare, his vain endeavor to engage Tim Gleason in fisticuffs earned him an unaccompanied, 14-minute sentence for roughing and misconduct.

If the loss of Horton and subsequent penalties to Chara and Dennis Seidenberg hindered the Bruins’ search for an equalizer, the infractions committed late in the middle frame indubitably delayed Peverley’s eventual icebreaker.

In terms of Chara and Rask, the reasoning in the heat of the moment was simple enough. The Bruins were trailing, 2-0, with one period plus 5:41 to spare. They were not cultivating assertive scoring chances with enough frequency. They had to harden their collective noses.

But there is a fine line between elevating your emotion to inject yourself back into a game and counterproductively letting your emotions boil over. Rask crossed that line the moment he crossed his own blue line, and you could argue that Chara went over the top himself.

The result was a 17-minute batch of penalty minutes for the instigator Chara and an undue minor for leaving the crease on Rask.

In turn, Boston was forced to kill off two valuable minutes of potential rally time in a full-length, 5-on-3 segment.

By the time Chara and Rask’s sentences were up, the Bruins had but 3:41 left in the second and the third period to try to thrash their way back into the game. They also had less in their tank, which comes naturally from a penalty kill like that, and they were down one important defenseman with Chara’s lengthy stay in the sin bin.

While Rask’s actions had no bearing on Chara’s fate, it did turn that two-minute, man-down segment into a protracted two-man disadvantage.

For his sake as the goalie, it was somewhat fitting that he was forced to participate in that penalty kill. He singlehandedly brought a full half of that first 5-on-3 upon his team.

And its long-term effect arrived when Carolina capitalized on two more two-man advantages with 6:34 and 5:02 left in the third, finalizing the 4-1 final.