Boston Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask is leaving the NHL bubble and opting out of the Stanley Cup playoffs, he announced via a statement from the team on Saturday.
“I want to be with my teammates competing, but at this moment there are things more important than hockey in my life, and that’s being with my family,” Rask said. “I want to thank the Bruins and my teammates for their support and wish them success.”
The news came less than two hours before the Bruins faced the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 3 of their quarterfinal series. Boston will now turn to veteran Jaroslav Halak as the starter for the rest of the tournament. The Canes won Game 2 to even the series, 1-1.
The Bruins won the Presidents Trophy this season as the only team to hit 100 points before the pause. The 33-year-old Rask, who helped lead the team to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2019, had a strong season, going 26-8-6 with a .929 save percentage.
Boston hasn’t looked as dominant in the summer’s restart. The Bruins went winless in the round robin, dropping from the first to fourth seed, and were poised for a tough battle with Carolina in the first round.
Rask ruffled feathers in the hockey world after Game 2, when he candidly discussed playing in the fanless atmosphere.
“To be honest with you, it doesn’t really feel like playoff hockey out there,” Rask said on Thursday.
Rask later expanded: “You’re trying to play as hard as you can. Obviously, you’re playing a best of seven series so there’s going to be some battles going on and whatnot. But when you play at your home rink, you play at an away rink, and there’s fans cheering for you or against you … that creates another buzz around the series. There’s none of that, so it just feels dull at times,” he said. “There might be five minutes and it’s just coast-to-coast hockey and there’s no atmosphere. It just feels like an exhibition game.”
On Friday, Bruce Cassidy addressed Rask’s comments, after it generated a day’s worth of headlines.
“I didn’t speak to him after his comments. Tuukka, I think the Boston media knows him well enough, he answers his questions how he feels,” Cassidy. “It is a unique environment, but to me there’s playoff intensity on the ice. You just need to control what you can control when you’re a player and, in my situation, a coach. The way I look at it, at the end of the day, they’re going to hand out the Stanley Cup this year to someone. We’ve got to play our best hockey if we want to be that team.”
Bruins captain Zdeno Chara also answered questions about Rask on Friday.
“I think we all have to realize it’s an adjustment and something that’s completely new and none of us have ever experienced,” Chara said. “So first of all, Tuukka has his rights to his views and opinions. I don’t think he meant anything bad about it, he was just kind of being honest. It does feel a little bit different from the other playoff experiences we’ve had with all of the fans and emotions. I think we’ll just continue to make adjustments going forward and feeling more comfortable in the environment that we are playing in right now.”