The break thats not a break: While fighting for gold sure is a thrilling experience for a player, the Sochi Olympics throw a wrench in the NHL's interworkings

The Bruins play their last game before the Olympic break on February 8th. That game will be their 57th game of the year meaning that as they must eventually get to 82, the fact that for 2 weeks there will be no additional games played stinks. As a result of that, the 5 Bruins going over the Russia this month will return to Boston facing a slate of 25 games in 49 days. They will play 8 back to back sets between February 26th and the end of the season and will never have a break longer than 2 days.

For a team that has been forced to deal with as many injuries to key players as the Bruins, this inconceivable workload could be greatly detrimental to the teams position going into the playoffs. One of the biggest reasons this may be true is that that the Bruins are a team that every year they have made a cup run with this team they have had a star goaltender playing star caliber goalie. However, when you are sitting there in thick pads for hours that are punctuated by saves that demand groin ripping flexibility fatigue becomes a very noticeable thing and has shown that it is already getting to Boston goalie, Tuukka Rask.

As we look ahead though, the Bruins cannot have that. Not only will Rask need to fight through the hectic month of March that follows the Olympic break but he himself will be playing in Sochi during that break and will likely log massive minutes on his goalie oriented Finnish Olympic team.

The Bruins know this though and are smart not to pretend that the Olympic break is actually a break. For Tuukka Rask who has been slowly slipping statistically, his coach has been giving him some time off as he was hastily pulled from the game against Montreal and played fewer games in the month of January than he has in any other month this season.

But what has also changed in this run up to the break is the play of the Bruins backup goalie, Chad Johnson.

"You need two good goalies throughout the season, because the season is so long." B's coach Claude Jullian said when asked about Johnson's play. "With March coming up, it's going to be a crazy, crazy month, so you're going to need two goalies. It's been good to see him get into this groove and helping us get the wins."

Excluding the game against Montreal, each of the last 4 games Johnson has appeared in have been wins as he has also effectively lowered his GAA down to a respectable 2.14. Secondly, it has now been 7 games since Johnson's season was seemingly thrown off course via a 4 goal shellacking by the Buffalo Sabers back in December and since that day, Johnson has allowed just 8 goals on 131 shots fired his way. 

"His record speaks for itself," Julien said. "The way he played tonight, even though people are going to say he didn't get tested, we know that's as big of a challenge for a goaltender as any, especially when you're playing a team that has a lot of skill. He's been playing well. It's been great."

"It allows me to go about what I expect, as far as playing time for a goaltender, so you certainly haven't been forced to overutilize a goaltender, and that way it makes it real comfortable."

But Chad Johnson's emergence and the conservative approach used when dealing with Tuukka's playing time has not been the only thing that has come out of this pre-Oylmpics drama. 

After he was named to the Slovakian Olympic team earlier in January, Bruins captain, Zdeno Chara was told recently that Slovakia would love for him to carry their flag in the opening ceremony set to take place before the NHL season is suspended. In a greatly commendable gesture on the part of the Bruins, they allowed their star deference to forgo games against the Blues and Senators so that he can accept such an honor. 

"What this guy has done for our organization and the honor that it represents to carry the flag for your country, how can you not support that opportunity," Claude Julien said. "So we're doing a job here, it wouldn't be different if he was injured, I'd rather send him there knowing that he's healthy and he's getting rest versus having a guy injured in your lineup not knowing when he's going to come back. So we're not under bad circumstances, we're under good circumstances with him."

Chara who leads the entire team in power play goals among other things will be sorely missed especially against the speedy Blues where a strong figure defending the blue line would go a long way towards halting the attacks of guys like David Backus or Alexander Steen. But nevertheless, if you are going to allow your players to go to Sochi than you cannot prevent them from taking part in the opening ceremony if they so please. 

The Bruins know this but ought to be feeling at least a little irritated by this whole thing. 

For 2 weeks in the middle of a professional sports season, that season will go into hibernation mode leaving its players to go play in the Olympics as they will move from being under the jurisdiction of the NHL to that of the IOC. What if someone is hurt? What if someone has trouble regaining chemistry after the layoff or what if one of the 5 Bruins going to Sochi gets tired playing up to 15 more games in a season than they usually would? 

Well frankly we do not know but what we do is that this does not work and come the 2016 Olympics the NHL will likely play on right through those games.