The Failed Return of Tuukka Rask

Cover Photo from: NHL.com

On January 13th, 2022, Tuukka Rask would make his first start in the NHL since June 9th, 2021. Under the expectations of many, Rask was expected to pick up right where we left off before he had hip surgery last June.

Ever since his first full season in the NHL (2009-10) he has never had a SV% below .912.

He was one of the main goalies that were consistent and that teams could rely on. And it seemed that way for the very first game. It wouldn;t be until 10:41 left in the 1st period on a wrist shot from the point by Ivan Provorov where he would see his first shot of the season. Rask would only give up 2 goals, both in the second period, and both down low in the front of the net. Rask would play 59 minutes and 40 seconds in his return to the NHL, giving up only 2 goals and having a .926 SV%.

I found a Hockey Plotter where you could plot shots a couple months ago so I will use that and NHL gamecenter to be able to show the shots (give or take a couple feet) https://aklongmuir.shinyapps.io/HockeyPlotter/

The Blue on the last chart are things he saved, but as you get more towards the yellow, that's where he is at risk for goals.

Rask wouldn’t play the next game, it wouldn’t be until 5 days later against the Hurricanes where we would see some action. However it would take less than 17 minutes for one of the best teams in hockey to put up 5 goals on him.

Rask would only face 12 shots, saving 7 of them, giving him a .583 SV% for the night.

With these charts we can see that most of Rask’s goals that he is giving up are down low. He gave up one goal from the point which had a lot of traffic in front which made it harder to see.

He was, once again, given a one game rest and came back 4 days later to start against the Jets. It took the Jets a little less than 3 minutes to get the game’s opening goal. He would also give up a goal with 29 seconds left. However he would get back on track for the rest of the game and not give up a single goal.

This chart looks a lot different due to the Jets shooting at a wide variety of places. Because if you look at just the shots…

you get that. But take a look at just the goals…

It is much cleaner.

2 days later, Rask would start 2 games in a row for the first time since the season prior, a game against the Ducks. (Also note that all 4 of the games that Rask played were at home).

Rask would give up 1 in the 1st, and 2 in both the 2nd and 3rd as the Bruins would lose 3-5. However, there is something different about this game if you compare it to every other game that Rask played in the 2021-22 season.

Rask gave up more goals from the top of the circles than he did before. He gave up more goals at the top of the “house” than the bottom. Now for those that don’t know, the “house” is the area of the zone that goes from the goal posts, to the dots, to the tops of the circles. So this:

By using some editing magic, he can put all the shot charts together.

So Rask gave up 12 goals in the 4 contests he was in. But as you can see, only 3 of those were outside the “house”. So based on the math, 75% of the goals that Rask gave up were in the house. But for all of the shots outside of the house, he was fine.

But a couple days later, Rask would retire and solidify a .844 SV% on the season, which explains the dip that we saw in the graph earlier.

Stats from: hockey-reference.com, NHL.com