Boston Bruins: Why the NHL shouldn’t punish an injured Tuukka Rask

The NHL should rescind the punishment for Boston Bruins’ goalie Tuukka Rask, who has ended up on injured reserve since opting out of the NHL All-Star Game.

If all is just, the league shouldn’t punish the Boston Bruins further than the fact they’ve now got an injured number-one goaltender. To tack a one-game suspension on the tail of any injury return for Tuukka Rask would be hugely unjust.

After all; Jake Guentzel, Kyle Palmieri, Dougie Hamilton, Joonas Korpisalo, Darcy Kuemper and Logan Couture won’t be punished for missing the game due to injury.

Given that Tuukka Rask announced his decision to skip the All-Star Weekend, for as he put it ‘selfish reasons’ on January 13th and promptly went down with a concussion the next day, it’d fair to point out the fact that the Boston Bruins could’ve delayed announcing his decision for 48 hours and this would never have been a concern.

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The Boston Bruins have actually done good by the league to announce the decision as early as possible to allow arrangements for a replacement goaltender, in this case Andrei Vasilevskiy, to attend the All-Star Weekend.

However, from the league’s perspective, there was a clear line in the sand. A date was set in terms of Tuukka Rask announcing he wouldn’t partake in the weekend and the injury blatantly occurred after that time.

It’s not even a vague enough injury that could be retroactively shifted back a little further when determining the date his stint as an injured reserve started. Therein lays the biggest obstacle to the Boston Bruins having his one-game suspension rescinded.

Say the injury doesn’t occur, he keeps playing, he’s still going to wear that one-game suspension. Now the injury has occurred, it’s easy to argue it’s not deserved as he’d have missed the game for ‘more legitimate’ reasons.

Realistically, the Boston Bruins are somewhat lucky. Dan Vladar is unlikely to spend much time between the pipes because Jaroslav Halak is a proven capable alternate starter for the team. He’s filled in for Tuukka Rask when his form has been sketchy in the past and there’s no reason he can’t run with the extended stint as number one.

The NHL as a league would be wiser to make the All-Star Weekend a little more optional. However, we understand why it’s not. The more optional it is, the less truly big-name stars would choose to attend, thus the less money they can rake in.

In this instance, a suspension upon an injury return comes across as incredibly harsh. Unfortunately it’s likely to remain that way purely based on the dates everything was announced.

Perhaps if you view this from a very different angle, you can make the argument that Tuukka Rask was indeed injured, albeit in a manner that may not be as blatant or as easy to diagnose by a team physician.

The Boston Bruins announced that their goalie wanted the family time after a long season last year. Surely you can make a strong argument that this is indeed a mental health concern for Rask. Given that the NHL advocates for mental health, maybe such reasoning should be seen as a valid reason to skip on the All-Star Weekend.

Yes, it’s a controversial take to suggest such a thing, but mental health holds a big place in the spotlight these days, not just among athletes but among the general populace as well. It’s a real thing that needs to be managed and kept healthy, just as much as an arm, leg or in Tuukka’s case, his head.

All in all though, Tuukka Rask has to see the extra game as one extra game to recover from this concussion. Boston Bruins fans will be relying on Halak to maintain them in the meantime and we’ll all hopefully move on from it happy with the results.