Tuukka Rask ready to roll in Providence

The next step in Tuukka Rask’s journey to return to the Boston Bruins will come Friday night, when the veteran netminder is expected to start for the Providence Bruins against the Lehigh Valley Phantoms at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center at 7:05 p.m.

Rask signed a professional tryout agreement with Providence on Thursday. It will be the first time he straps on the pads for live game action since the B’s were bounced out of the playoffs by the New York Islanders last spring.

Speaking to reporters for the first time since then, Rask said he is feeling better than he has in over a year and is ready for this next phase of his comeback from a hip injury, which he anticipates will be brief before he returns in a Boston uniform.

“I feel great. The biggest issue for me was the catching of the joint and the pain that that created, so that all is gone,” said Rask after practicing in Providence. “It makes a huge difference, because every time I go to butterfly and get up, I don’t have to think about it locking up once again and creating that pain, so I feel great.”

Rask, who’ll turn 35 on March 10, said the hip had bothered him all of last season.

“It was just one of those wear-and-tear situations when you hit enough miles where your body’s just starting to break up on you and for goalies, the hips are the first things to go usually,” said Rask, the B’s all-time winningest goalie, who owns 306 career wins and a .921 lifetime save percentage.

The hip didn’t really bother him in his everyday movement and, if he had chosen to retire, he probably would not have bothered getting the surgery.

“It was just for hockey,” said Rask. “If I didn’t decide to play anymore and I didn’t want to pursue rehab and whatnot, I didn’t have to do the surgery. But because I wanted to have a good quality of life and then want to play hockey again, it was basically the only option. But it is nice that now I’ve been practicing quite a bit with high volume that the pain doesn’t come after practice like it used to. That’s the biggest difference.”

While no contract has been registered with the NHL yet, it certainly sounds like the parameters of a deal are set.

“We have a plan in place and it shouldn’t be an issue. But we’ll see. I plan on playing (Friday) and we’ll see about Sunday then moving forward next week I should be with the big guys,” said Rask.

Rask said he’s not thinking farther down the road than the next couple of weeks, which suggests that, as many have suspected, this next contract will not go beyond this season. A few months ago he joked during a radio interview that he would be willing to come back to play for Bud Light. Asked if that was still the case, Rask chuckled.

“We’ll see. I haven’t seen the contract yet. I’m guessing that might be frowned upon but we’ll find out,” said Rask.

If there was any friction within the goaltending trio of Rask, Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman, it hasn’t been visible in practice. The usual fist bumps have been exchanged when one goalie hands the net off to the other. The plan for Rask to return has been pretty clear for a while.

“I had a good meeting with (GM Don Sweeney) after last year and we talked for a while there. The biggest one for me was that if I feel great, I want to try to come back and heal properly,” said Rask. “The only thing I want to do at this point is I want to help out. I’m not looking for a big contract, like I’ve said before, I just want to come out and help the guys and do my part that way. Obviously there are people from the outside who want to look at controversy. There’s always going to be controversy when you play in Boston. But I think so far, sharing the net with Sway and Linus in practice, we get along great.”

A major part of his willingness to be in Boston – and only Boston, it appears – was finishing his career with players like Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand.

“That’s why, in my head, I didn’t want to flirt with the opportunity to go anywhere else,” said Rask. “A lot of it is a business, as everybody knows, but for us players, when we’ve had a team like the Bruins, basically a bunch of us have grown up together here, you kind of feel that brotherhood and you don’t want to leave guys on bad terms. I just want to come back and be helpful and maybe finish it up with a bunch of those guys who I played with my whole career.”

Now it looks like that stellar career is about to resume.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3n4mbX7