Boston Bruins: Tuukka Rask shows just how strict NHL bubble is

Tuukka Rask spoke to the media for the first time after missing Sunday’s game and gave Boston Bruins fans an insight on just how strict the NHL is being.

A lot of Boston Bruins fans were surprised to see that Tuukka Rask would not be playing on Sunday. Fans pondered why he wasn’t out there on the ice.

Rask seems to get talked about a lot in Boston. Most of the time it seems to be people trashing him. Missing the first game of the restart gave his haters plenty of ammo.

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But on Monday we found out that Rask missed Sunday’s game for some rather serious reasons. It appeared that Rask might have come down with the coronavirus.

In a media availability on Monday, Rask detailed the events that led him to miss Sunday’s game.

"“I had a cough, so I clicked ‘Yes’ on the (self-reporting health) app, and all kinds of red lights started blinking and I was quarantined for two days,” Rask explained. “They wanted to do two negative tests after that, and that’s it. Now I was back today.”"

This shows just how serious the NHL is taking things. All Rask had was a mild cough and that ended up in him missing a game.

Credit to Rask for being honest because this seems to open up a can of worms when it comes to self-reporting. Now that players know what happens when you just mention that you have a simple cough will they be honest? It’s hard to think that a star player such as Sidney Crosby, or Connor McDavid will do the same thing knowing that they might miss a game.

This could lead to some problems if players don’t self-report symptoms or even worse an outbreak in the bubble. That would be the worst case scenario but thankfully that seems rather unlikely.

So it’s not like Rask was hungover or ate too many buffalo wings. All he was doing was following the proper protocols and keeping his teammates safe. Luckily this happened in the seeding games and not the actual playoffs.

Expect Rask to come out with a bang and show why he is one of the best goaltenders in the NHL.