Rask standing tall for Bruins against Lightning in playoffs

The Coaches Room is a weekly column by one of four former NHL coaches and assistants who will turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher.
In this 2018 Stanley Cup Playoffs edition, Jim Corsi, former goalie coach of the Buffalo Sabres and St. Louis Blues, analyzes the play of Boston Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask and what went wrong for the Bruins against the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Second Round.

Tuukka Rask is not a problem for the Boston Bruins.
One of the things that we wanted to do with Rask when we played against him was to make him move because he's a big man and he's a reactionary goalie. It looks like the Tampa Bay Lightning have that same mentality.
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The Lightning are throwing pucks at his feet. They're throwing pucks into the traffic. They're shooting on the run with a lot of moving parts so he never really gets a chance to settle. They're doing what I had been writing about most of the year, creating opportunities by funneling pucks to the net that force him to move.
But from what I saw in Games 1 and 2, Rask was the difference for the Bruins. He kept them in there for a 6-2 win in Game 1. He gave them a chance before they lost 4-2 in Game 2. If anything, with the talk about how his game has been difficult and inconsistent, I think he has stood tall in the first two games in this series.
The one goal that we can look at and critique is Tyler Johnson's goal that put the Lightning ahead 2-1 because I've heard a lot about that one.

I think Johnson mishit it and the puck sort of went on end. But Rask, instead of keeping his ground, tried to overplay the far side and moved into the puck.
That's one of the things some goalies like to do. They like to move into the puck as opposed to once they established their position just staying there because they've got the whole net covered. In this case, he figured it was going to the far side so he overplayed the far side, but the puck flipped up and went off the end of his stick.
When the game is that close, any goal against will draw attention, especially with history, but I think Rask was good in Game 2.
On the other side, when you're talking about Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak, how their game was in Game 2, well it was a struggle. Two of the three goals that beat Rask, that line had the puck and they turned it over.
Marchand passed the puck back to Bergeron, but he passed it behind him. That set up the chance and Ondrej Palat scored to give the Lightning a 3-1 lead.
On Johnson's goal, Pastrnak gave the puck away in the Bruins' attacking zone, Palat flipped it out, Brayden Point chased it down and Johnson scored.
On both giveaways, they're passing the puck back instead of going forward. It almost seems like they're trying to serve Bergeron instead of throwing pucks at the net. They're making back passes and those are getting intercepted, and away the Lightning go.
The Bruins were credited with 13 giveaways in Game 2. Those stats aren't always the best, but 13 giveaways on the final stat sheet is an indication of a problem for the Bruins, especially when six were credited to Pastrnak, Marchand, Charlie McAvoy and Zdeno Chara.

The Bruins as a team have to get back to doing what they do best. They typically throw pucks at the net and cycle below the circles. When they do it, it makes the opposition's defense look inside, putting some stress on them. The Bruins are not stressing the Lightning's defense.
We can sit here and say the Bruins got outshot 67-44 in both games, but one of the reasons is they weren't shooting pucks, let alone the turnovers feeding the Lightning's transition game. They need to toss pucks at the net to force the Lightning's defense to turn. They need to put pucks behind their D.
The Lightning deserve credit for how they responded in Game 2. They didn't allow Bergeron and Marchand time. They didn't wait. They went at them and what happened is they got them caught trying to make a play as opposed to just getting the puck in and trying to go to the net.
That line will have to get the puck behind the Lightning's defense and get there, work harder, in Game 3 at TD Garden on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, TVAS).
If we take it back to Rask, I know there is criticism toward him stemming off Game 7 against the Toronto Maple Leafs and how he wasn't that special in that series, but it's unwarranted now because he has kept the Bruins in it.