Boston Bruins: What to expect from Tuukka Rask in 2020-21
By Matt Hawkins
What should we expect from Boston Bruins’ goaltender Tuukka Rask in 2020-21?
Over his 13 years with the Boston Bruins, goalie Tuukka Rask has consistently been one of the best between the pipes in the NHL.
In 536 games — 515 of which are starts — Rask has 291 wins, 50 shutouts, a .922 save percentage (SV%), 2.26 goals-against average (GAA), .608 quality start percentage (QS%), William M. Jennings Trophy, and Veniza Trophy.
While Rask was good for between 55 and 70 games during the prime of his career, he hasn’t played in more than 54 games in each of the last three seasons.
With Rask not getting any younger, the B’s have decided to go with a tandem approach for the last few years in an attempt to preserve the elite level of play that Rask gives almost every year.
Over these three years, Rask is averaging 29 wins 46.3 starts, 5.3 shutouts, a .919 SV%, 2.32 GAA, and .594 QS%. Rask has started 139 of the possible 234 games over this period, which is 59.4% of the games. Additionally, Rask’s 87 wins in 139 starts equal a 62.6 win percentage.
Now, I don’t expect the Bruins to be as good as they were in 2019-20 in 2020-21 because they’ll be missing Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak for a little bit at the beginning of the season and they have a very inexperienced left side of their defense with the loss of Torey Krug in free agency.
This will lead to a regression in Rask’s stats. While Rask had a league-leading GAA at 2.12 in 2019-20, I think this will jump back up to around 2.45. Additionally, his SV% will drop from a .929 in 2019-20 to around a .914 in 2020-21.
In regard to his QS%, I think Rask will have around a .545 QS%. Furthermore, with a shortened schedule of just 56 games, I think Rask will only register two shutouts and around 18 wins while starting around 33 games.
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At 33 years old, I expect Rask to be very good in 2020-21, however, with Boston losing a key piece on defense in Krug and not having Marchand and Pastrnak for some of the start of the season I don’t expect him to put up the elite numbers we saw in 2019-20.