With a heavy heart, the Quest is over.
Jeremy Swayman gets his first NHL start tonight. Swayman is the future in net for the Bruins and it will be exciting to see him in action, but make no mistake this is a sad day. Halak is sidelined with Covid which is what ultimetly lead to Swayman getting the nod, but it’s Tuukka making puukka in his pants for the 4th season in a row that is the cause here.
“Four years something’s happened with Tuukka down the stretch,” noted an NHL source, referring to Rask’s 2019-20 exit from the bubble, last-game illness in 2015-16, and Game 6 performance in the 2013 Stanley Cup Final. “Gone to shit every time.”
Oh, they forgot the melt down - two goals in 4 shots to start Game 7 of the Cup Finals against the Blues. Ya, we are all aware of Tuukka’s inability to post when the team needs him most. It is something that has had me begging them to make a trade and now here we are in the last year of his deal out with a “bad back” with no timetable to return.
Rask and the Bruins believed the injury was behind them when he returned to the crease on March 25 against the Islanders. He lasted just one period before he skated off, hunched over slightly and stumbling after one push out of his crease. Rask has not been on the ice since those 20 minutes.
Short term, the sense I get is the Bruins really don’t know when Rask will be available. Cassidy compared the goalie’s situation to that of Kevan Miller, who has now missed 19 games because of a flareup in his right knee. At first, the Bruins believed Miller’s absence would be short-term. It turned out to be longer.
If you ask me, this is the last we will see of Tuukka Rask in the NHL. Anyone privy to Finnish celebrities may catch a glimpse of him or handsome pool boys could feel visual daggers in their back, but hockey fans? Nay.
Which brings us to the end of one of the most anticipated Quests in recent history. The quest for the butthole tattoo.
The Queen so bravely declared if the Boston Bruins were to win a Stanley Cup with Tuukka Rask in net he would bare that Finnish grin across his crack via, Well, Imagine a train going through a tunnel. Now imagine that train is a bunch of sharp needles vibrating at a tremendous speed. This is the tattoo needle. So a tattoo needle and some minor anal bleeding would have marked the glory of this quest, alas it is not time be. Sad.