As has been a main focus of the last to Breaking Down The Bruins articles, I’ll start with the goaltending. It seems like the roles have slowly shifted back to where Bruins fans expected them to be at the start of the season. It’s looking like Jaroslav Halak has slowly but surely cooled off, holding a 13-9-2 record, a 2.47 GAA, and 3 shutouts. Interestingly enough, both Halak and Rask are currently holding a .919 SV%, and they’ve played nearly identical minutes, with Rask playing 1,458 minutes, and Halak playing 1,481, which I think tells the bigger story. Up to December 5th of this season (when I last wrote about the Bruins), Halak held a 2.25 GAA and a .932 SV%, which has since risen 0.25 in goals allowed and dropped 13% in SV%. Meanwhile, up to December 5th, Rask’s GAA was 2.59 and had a .913 SV%. Rask’s current GAA is 2.43 which is a drop of 0.16, and his save percentage has risen by 6%.
This I think paints a much larger image of what’s been going on with the Bruins as a whole. These numbers with Rask and Halak are obviously not bad, it can create inconsistency with the feel of the skaters in front of them, hence why the Bruins are doing well, but not great. They’re sitting 4th in the Atlantic, which the division itself has risen some eyebrows in the level of talent it holds this season. They have a 27-17-5 record, holding the first wildcard spot, and good enough for 12th in the league itself. I don’t know about you, but Boston just isn’t a middle-of-the-pack team. With the goaltending gifts they’ve been given by the hockey gods up to this point, the rest of the team really needs to come through. Even with all the injuries they’ve endured, their lineup all the way through Providence is deep, and has proven multiple times they can keep calling guys up that will produce.

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