Boston Bruins: Tuukka Rask is not the guilty party in Cup Final loss

If there’s one person on the Boston Bruins roster that can hold their head high, despite a painful Game 7 defeat, it’s Tuukka Rask.

Time and again in the post-season, he was the only person seemingly playing. Especially in the Stanley Cup Final series against the St. Louis Blues, there were times it was Tuukka Rask and just him keeping the Boston Bruins in games.

Of course, the easy narrative is that Tuukka Rask can’t deal with the big-game pressure. Tuukka choked against the Chicago Blackhawks in 2013 and now he’s choked again in 2019. That is an incredibly unfair narrative though; he can hardly be held accountable for the first goal nor the second, which was caused by an inexplicably bad line change by Brad Marchand.

For the Blues to eventually put four goals past Tuukka was unfair – his performance, even in Game 7, saw him come up big for the Boston Bruins on multiple occasions. When the first goal got past him, he’d faced barely a shot and he looked comfortably in position if it weren’t for the tip in-front.

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Coming into Game 7, Tuukka Rask had shone up big-time in series-clinching games. Any notion that the Boston Bruins goaltender couldn’t handle a big occasion is absolute nonsense.

In three series-clinching games, he had two shutouts, a 0.33 goals against average and a 0.990 save percentage. But of course, Tuukka can’t handle the big occasion?!

Now, I know there’s an argument that there was less pressure in two of those series clinching games, given the Columbus Blue Jackets were 3-2 down in the series and the Carolina Hurricanes were 3-0 down, but that discredits the pressure that the Boston Bruins would’ve been feeling.

The performance against the Toronto Maple Leafs in a proper do-or-die scenario was just as good. Ignoring the clinching scenarios, if you look at the games where the Boston Bruins were at risk of elimination, leading into last night’s Stanley Cup Final, he looked just as good. A slightly higher 1.34 goals against average and a 0.953 save percentage with elimination looming.

But lazy narratives; Tuukka Rask is the reason that the Boston Bruins lost the Stanley Cup Final. He is the sole reason that they were in the Stanley Cup Final in the first place. No other individual player performed so effectively throughout the whole of the post-season.

You can lay claims that Patrice Bergeron won games, that Brad Marchand was still scoring points throughout, maybe that Charlie Coyle and Marcus Johansson were difference-makers on occasion. However, none of them were consistently winning games for the Boston Bruins. Tuukka did.

Don’t blame this loss on Tuukka Rask. Blame it on the lack of a team performance in Game 7. Heck, the lack of cohesive team performances throughout the Stanley Cup Final.