Last year was a disappointing season for the Boston Bruins. They had failed to make the playoffs for the first time in the Claude Julien era. Peter Chiarelli lost his job partly because of the B’s inability to make the postseason.
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Oddly, a lot of people chose to focus a lot of the blame on Bruins goaltender Tuukka Rask. Fans questioned his ability to be an effective net minder, and they objected to the seven million dollar per year contract.
The staff at Puck Daddy are fanatical in their hatred of all things Bruin. If given a chance to malign the franchise, the players, or the fans, they’ll take it. So, when the team over at Yahoo! Sports puts Tuukka Rask in the Top 5 , you know that he’ll have a good season.
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He’s still one of the top five goaltenders in the NHL. While certain fan bases would like to deride the 27-year old Finnish native for not having a Corey Price year (The same way those fan bases derided Price for having two mediocre years.), the design team at EA Sports seem to agree. EA Sports, the company that brings us our annual edition of video game hockey-crack has announced their top ten goaltenders for EA 2016.
EA 2016 (with its now Kane-less cover) will be released on September 15th. Tuukka Rask ended up with a rating of 92 / 100. That’s the same rating he had for EA 2015, and that 92 rating places him fourth among all goaltenders represented in the game. (Los Angeles Kings’ Jonathan Quick and New York Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist have a 93, and the Canadiens Carey Price has a 94.)
A lot of Rask’s eventual numbers will depend on the kind of help he gets from the Bruins blueline. The blueline is still in the middle of a shake up, and they will likely need a few games to help find their identity. As long as they can give the Bruins goaltender a decent amount of support (and that Claude Julien doesn’t repeat the seventy game season for Rask), Rask’s numbers should easily be in the Top 5.