B’s goalie situation gets thrown into blender hours before game
In a matter of hours, the Bruins’ goalie situation was thrown in a blender and on the highest setting.
It started early Friday when Tuukka Rask, who has not played since Monday’s 22-of-27 loss to the Ducks, was scratched from his expected start in Arizona. Given the way Rask has started, and the B’s obvious commitment to get him up to speed as soon as they can, that sounds a slight alarm. Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy was actually asked by Mike Felger on Friday about the Black and Gold’s commitment to the Rask ‘experiment’, too, and gave a telling answer.
“I think we’re going to see it through,” Cassidy told Felger. “[Rask] could have a change of heart in that regard, we won’t control that. We went into this with, he’s put the time into rehab, we’ll give him x-amount of starts to find his game. That’s a little tough, obviously, in season, but we were willing to do that because of his resume.”
With Rask pulled from his scheduled start, Linus Ullmark was announced as the team’s starter.
But the moves behind beyond that flip.
The Bruins also made the call to pull Jeremy Swayman from the Providence lineup. It was a scratch from what was a scheduled start, too, according to Mark Divver. The obvious idea on the part of the Bruins is to get Swayman out to the NHL club before the snow buried him back on the East. But with Swayman unable to get from Hartford to Glendale in two hours flat, the team also promoted veteran depth goaltender Troy Grosenick up to the NHL club from the taxi squad.
In other words, the only goaltender deemed unavailable is indeed the 34-year-old Rask.
That’s apparently due to a lower-body injury, according to the NESN broadcast crew. A hip injury, for what it’s worth, would be classified as a lower-body injury. Naturally, that’s concerning given Rask’s surgery last summer.
Rask is 2-2-0 with an .844 save percentage and 4.28 goals against average this season.
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