"I'd probably be laughing right now if we won, right? But it sucks when you lose it," he said. "I just hate, especially when you can't stop the puck. That's the worst feeling." Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask said in a verbal reiteration of his end of game fit Thursday night in Boston. "I'd gas it right away. Midseason, take it away," he then said of the entire existence of the shootout. "I don't [expletive] want it."
Well Tuukka, after you smashed the post, your stick and finally the ice itself you seemed to have gotten your point across.
For those who did not infer from the aura of anger embodied by the words above, the Bruins lost yesterday and while losing alone does hurt enough it was the fashion that the Bruins most recent shortcoming came in that has people all riled up this weekend.
After the shootout solution to the terrible being of the NHL tie was introduced following the 2005 NHL lockout, the NHL has seen a constant upward trend in the number of shootouts in relation to the number of games played and after a recent proposal at the GM meetings in Toronto was shot down the lament of NHL players in particular has all but become a screaming constant.
"At least it would be a goal within the game, not just a shootout goal," Rask said.
The Bruins have now played 3 shootouts this season and Tuukka has been a part of all of them. However, Thursday seemed different. It was a hard fought game that saw 4 lead changes, 64 hits and 83 shots. Rask faced 26 of those 83 shots and while he did manage to stop 24 of those 26 shots en route to yet another strong effort, the Bruins star seemed out of sync throughout the game and after starting 19 out of the Bruins 22 games played this season, fans immediately seem to point to fatigue as a major reason for the outburst.
Rask is tired, Rask is annoyed but in the words of coach Claude Jullian there is no harm in harming a goalpost every now and then.
"He was frustrated,” Julien said “We’ve seen worse. We’ve seen a crate go flying before and that’s just Tuukka. He’s got that temper that sometimes you wish he’d kind of hide it a little bit, and hold on for at least a minute and do it behind closed doors, but that’s just the way he is. That’s his personality."
Jullian then referenced the slew of comedy directed at Tuukka's failure to break his stick during his initial outburst.
"He had a new stick in his hands today and I think he finally destroyed the other one after a few tries. I’m just doing the same thing as you guys; I’m laughing it off. It’s just a frustrated goaltender that really takes a lot of pride in winning games. No matter what he does, if he feels he didn’t pull his load, he’s going to be like that.”
The topic of Jullian's words than reverted to the shootout genre.
"It doesn't matter whether we win or lose in a shootout, we all have our opinions on that," Julien said. "I just find when a game is played so well like that, it's a lot easier when both teams could've walked out of here and said, 'You know what? A hard fought game' and both teams would've been happy. Right now, you come out of there, more or less feeling like you've lost a game. In my mind we played well enough to win. Those are tough, whatever, if you want to call it a loss to take because I thought we deserved a lot better."
Thursday night was...interesting. As the puck was dropped we all knew the potential that this game held. Alexander Steen came into the night having scored points in 13 of his last 16 games and yet the Bruins kept him at bay. The Bruins came into the night 1 loss away from falling out of 1st place in the conference and yet even when they did just that, the point they gained by launching themselves into overtime has them 2 points up on the Penguins for the title of best in the east.
Loosing stinks and frankly Tuukka knows that better than anyone else but above all one loss does not define a season. It is the enthusiasm shown by Rask's smashing his stick and it is the comedic aura combined with the underlying sense of intensity exhibited by his coach that show that the Bruins are no last place failure. They are competitors.
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