Boston Bruins: Why Tuukka Rask Must Start Saturday In Montreal

Never mind Tim Thomas and Tuukka Rask’s contrary track records against the Montreal Canadiens, for the differences have been rendered irrelevant the way the Boston Bruins have performed this October.

Never mind the prevalent hypothesis that the team subconsciously brews up a better effort in front of its veteran stopper than the heir-apparent. Outside of their victories against Toronto and Tampa Bay, the difference in offensive support the Bruins have granted their goalies is somewhere between negligible and nonexistent.

Never mind the notion of a “hot hand,” because such a thing is simply absent at this time. The Bruins have continuously failed to compose a pair of consecutive victories and are already on the heels of two straight losses for the second time. Thomas has taken both of those last two albatrosses.

Accordingly, it is high time for coach Claude Julien and general manager Peter Chiarelli to translate recent words into action. Rask has been promised more crease time this season, yet has played only two of Boston’s first nine games.

Between three consecutive starts for Thomas and one four-day gap between the Bruins’ last two outings, Rask has not seen extramural action in 10 days and counting. Before that, he waited eight days between his first and second appearance of the young season.

His active hiatus could have been reduced to six days going on seven had he started last Saturday’s bout with San Jose. In turn, Thomas would have had an identical week’s worth of days off between the Toronto and Montreal games at TD Garden.

Julien has implicitly crammed in as much Thomas time as possible so as to capitalize on these early occurrences of breath-catching buffets and give the Vezina and Conn Smythe winner the best of both worlds.

But for all the concern about giving the 37-year-old Thomas sufficient rest time, there should be equal urgency to ensure that the 24-year-old Rask does not rest too much or too often.

The more Rask plays, the sooner the Bruins are bound to kick this supposed habit of letting down in front of him. In turn, he will start accumulating wins sooner rather than later and thus set himself and his skating mates on a symbiotic cycle of trust, confidence and success.

So far this year, Rask has garnered 118:50 minutes-played and 54 saves on 59 shots with two of those goals coming on a lethal 5-on-3 segment. In return for his toil, he has earned all of one goal against the opposition.

Frightful stats, but what exactly has Thomas achieved in his own last two starts? Not unlike Rask’s latest loss to Carolina, Thomas and the Bruins fell behind the Sharks early last Saturday and momentarily perked up in the third period to at least hatch their own goose-egg. But ultimately, they were too drained to fully surmount the deficit, which San Jose’s Benn Ferriero renewed for good en route to a 4-2 decision.

And sequentially speaking, Thursday night’s bout with the Habs was a regression to opening night against Philadelphia, when a power-play strike had the Bruins ahead, 1-0, before they spilled that lead in favor of a 2-1 loss.

Thomas was fortunate just to have a one-goal cushion to begin with. Patrice Bergeron’s 5-on-4 icebreaker was virtually an “own goal” on the part of Montreal’s Tomas Plekanec, whose face-off win pinballed its way past goaltender Carey Price late in the first period.

None other than Plekanec earned the night’s allotment of redemption when, after Erik Cole drew a 1-1 knot around the halfway mark of the second period, he beat Thomas on a spontaneous deke for the eventual game-winner.

Incidentally, as effective as Thomas often is with his kinetic tendencies―which he certainly was on a series of heart-stopping saves Thursday night―Rask probably would have maintained his position on Plekanec’s initial attempt and thus been able to stop that winning shot. Translation: He could have saved Boston at least one invaluable point.

Or, at the very worst, the Bruins still would have lost a one-goal decision in regulation with Rask on duty. The skaters doubtlessly brought this upon themselves by going 1-for-6 on the power play, all within the first two periods before the closing frame went penalty-free.

But to that point, doesn’t that obliterate the idea that Thomas gives the Bruins an inherently better chance than his colleague? Over two games in front of Rask, the Bruins have gone an identical 1-for-6 on the power play. Overall, they have converted 12.9 percent of their chances with Thomas in the crease and 16.7 percent with Rask.

On the other side of the special teams’ spectrum, Thomas has confined the opposition to a 2-for-23 power-play success rate. Rask has helped to kill all seven of the 5-on-4 predicaments he has faced.

Not so different after all, is it?

While it’s too late to do Thursday’s game over, Julien can come close in Saturday’s Montreal rematch. Moreover, it is pivotal that Rask at least get into a gradual rhythm now in order to be ready for the heart of the schedule, when his services will doubtlessly be needed more frequently.

Why delay? Let him play.