Boston Bruins: Tuukka Rask should’ve been given the night off versus Florida

The Boston Bruins absolutely should’ve given Tuukka Rask the night off against the Florida Panthers. It was the perfect chance to give Jaroslav Halak a second-straight start.

Now don’t get me wrong, it seems like every member of the Boston Bruins’ line-up decided to take the night off after going up by four in the second period. Tuukka Rask is a goalie that has his swings in form and despite looking good for a shut-out through two, he capitulated in the third.

Given that the fixture sat almost on it’s own this week, with a day off prior and two days off before facing the Toronto Maple Leafs on Friday, it provided the chance to give Halak a second straight start and hopefully find some form

After all, Tuukka Rask, heading into this game, had conceded 3 goals in his previous last start and 5 the game before that. It was almost expected that he’d concede upwards of 3 especially as the Florida Panthers, although defensively slightly inept, had been scoring at will heading into the game.

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His start to the year was beyond impressive, but then again, the team in general was firing all cylinders and didn’t look like it could lose. Since losing numerous players to injury, suddenly there’s a slight bit more reliance on goaltending as the last line of defense.

Jarsolav Halak has been nowhere near perfect either, conceding 4 in all three games he played prior to the shoot-out loss to the Philadelphia Flyers. However, his form on that night, despite the loss, suggested that he’d turned the corner and could be relied upon to keep the team in the game.

My thinking was to give Halak a second game, rest Rask, see if Halak performed well and potentially even maintain him a third game versus the Leafs before slotting Rask back in for the second half of that back-to-back against the Washington Capitals.

Load management is the name of the game. Instead, what we now have is two goaltenders, neither of which can seemingly find their game and both are cold together – the worst scenario for the Boston Bruins.

Rest may or may not have been the cure for Tuukka Rask, but I doubt Halak could’ve done much worse than dropping four goals across the third frame.

More than anything, it’s hard to one hundred percent blame the goaltending for the recent run of form; you can make plenty of excuses around the current injury woes and you can make no excuse for the fact that the Boston Bruins have been switching off.

On this night, it properly caught them out – they switched off in the third period and were in receipt of a four-goal comeback. That’s not a position the Boston Bruins should ever have been in.