You could say having a good goaltender in hockey is like having a good pitcher in baseball.
If you don’t have one, then good luck winning games. No really, wish you the best of luck — because you’ll definitely need it. That’s what the Boston Bruins are looking at right now, except I’m not wishing them anything because their performance doesn’t really impact my life.
But it might impact someone else’s, and that’s what I’m here for. Right now, Bruins fans probably know the team is pretty thin. Specifically, they’re thin in net. And that’s not good. It’s never good. So they just have to go with who was left.
For the time being, their two goalies are Malcolm Subban and Zane McIntyre. Yes, his name is really Zane McIntyre. Sure, there might be some future potential in both these guys — guys who were expected to split goaltending duties in Providence. But Tuukka Rask, who might be dealing with both a hamstring and groin injury simultaneously and backup Anton Khudobin’s upper body injury, left the Bruins no other place to turn.
Khudobin is expected to miss three weeks while Rask might be back Saturday. Regardless, the damage has been done.
The Bruins dropped two games this week. And they were bad. They lost, 5-0, to the Minnesota Wild. And they lost, 5-2, to the New York Rangers. Subban was pulled midway through the Wild game. And in went McIntyre, who stood in for that game and the next one. These guys just aren’t NHL material right now. No easy way to put it.
Makes sense though: Subban was 0-3-1 while allowing 4.50 goals per game in his first four games with the Providence Bruins. So obviously, this isn’t an ideal situation, and the Bruins can’t win with that kind of AHL production in an NHL game.