BOSTON – The goals just kept coming and coming until eventually the excitement brewing inside TD Garden felt more like bewilderment.
Six goals past Tuukka Rask?
Surely, this must have been a dream — or maybe a nightmare, depending on who you’re backing in this Stanley Cup final.
Consider that it was just the second time in 170 NHL appearances the fiery Finn was beaten for six goals in one night. That it happened in the midst of a playoff run, where he has threatened to shatter the post-season record for save percentage, added an extra layer of intrigue.
“It is not fun,” Rask said after Boston’s 6-5 overtime loss to Chicago on Wednesday. “We just made it too tough on ourselves. Not our best night.”
A victory would have put the Bruins on the verge of a second Stanley Cup title in three years. Now what do we have here?
That is not yet clear. No one predicted this.
As the series shifts back to Chicago for Game 5 on Saturday, the Bruins will obviously be looking to cut down on the defensive breakdowns they saw in Wednesday’s loss.
Rask faced a number of odd-man rushes while being peppered with 47 shots in Game 4, but couldn’t totally be excused for the loss, either.
In the words of coach Claude Julien, the entire team was just average on this night.
“They were better than we were,” he said. “I just think we weren’t very sharp in our decision-making. … There was a lot of our game that was just average, and average isn’t good enough at this stage of the season.”
Speaking to a handful of Finnish reporters Wednesday night, Rask said the wild game reminded him a little of the first-round series against Toronto. That isn’t something anyone around here wants to relive, given the brush with death that came with it.
By the end of the 11-goal affair, 22 different players had registered at least a point.
Chicago held leads of 1-0, 3-1, 4-2 and 5-4, but the Bruins wouldn’t back down until overtime arrived again. The one positive Boston will try and take from the experience is that it still had a great chance to win despite its poorest defensive effort of the entire playoffs so far.
“We found a way to get back into the game but it wasn’t enough,” said centre Patrice Bergeron. “Some of the goals are some breakdowns that can’t happen. We had some chances in the overtime and couldn’t put it away.
“In a series you can’t get too high or too low.”
Yes, but the great thing about playoff hockey is how much the stakes grow with each passing game. We’re now down to a best two out of three for the Stanley Cup and no one can claim to have a grip on where it’s going from here.
It was clear early in Game 4 that life was going to be tougher on Boston.
Michal Handzus opened the scoring with a short-handed goal that came at the end of a 2-on-1 rush with Brandon Saad, who had stolen the puck from Tyler Seguin at his own blue-line.
The game really turned hectic when Jonathan Toews and Patrick Sharp scored two minutes eight seconds apart in the second period. The Blackhawks were buzzing and Bruins captain Zdeno Chara was on his way to an uncharacteristic minus-3 performance.
“They got those two goals,” said Rask. “They go up 3-1 and we have to start attacking and we get goals, they get a goal, we get a goal — back and forth like a practice kind of thing. When they got those two goals to make it 3-1, that’s when it started.”
The questions now will turn to whether the Blackhawks might have shaken Rask.
The Boston goaltender wasn’t beaten for more than two regulation-length games, but once he allowed one goal five others soon followed.
“I don’t know if we really got to him,” said Blackhawks winger Patrick Sharp. “There were some rebound goals and deflection goals. It doesn’t really change our mindset, he’s going to be great going forward.”
History backs up that notion.
Rask still leads the playoffs in save percentage (.941) and goals-against average (1.83) and rebounded nicely from the only previous game where he was beaten six times in his NHL career. That came against Buffalo on Jan. 31 and was immediately followed by a shutout and victories in seven of his next eight starts.
Following the loss in Game 4, he didn’t try to sugar-coat the situation.
“They got a lot of shots through and a lot of second opportunities,” said Rask. “If you let in six goals as a goalie you can’t be satisfied, but as a team I didn’t think it was our best game either.
This certainly didn’t look anything like Bruins hockey.
“It is definitely not our style of game,” said Bergeron. “We need to tighten up in our zone and also in the neutral zone. The fact is with their speed — this is what they want.
“There are some things we haven’t done right.”
The Stanley Cup is going to come down to a battle of wills between the two best teams in hockey. Which one can get the other to play its game now?