With all due respect to Patrice Bergeron, Tuukka Rask was the best player on the ice for the Bruins Monday. Though he isn’t always on the ice, Rask being the best player out there is becoming a recurring theme this season. 

Rask, who has now won seven games in a row, had to deal with four breakaways and deliver the Bruins a win in a shootout Monday night against the Panthers. It was a test against a team that though very thin and struggling of late, has proven to be legitimate this season, but Rask is past the point of tests this season. In case stats need to back up the eyeball test, he still leads the league in both goals-against average and save percentage. 

Realistically speaking, Rask allowed one goal Monday night, and it was on a breakaway. The other goal, the Panthers’ first of the night, was a flukey play in which Rask made the save and saw the rebound bounce off Dennis Seidenberg’s glove and into the net. So while the box score might make Rask’s performance look like a good one, it was actually up there with some of his best this season.  

Monday certainly reinforced that the Bruins have cooled off since their otherworldly stretch of play from the beginning of November until just a couple weeks ago. The team was caught napping at the end of Shawn Matthias’ delay of the game penalty, and the forward stepped out of the box just in time to catch a pass from Tomas Kopecky. With no one but Rask to beat, Matthias went five-hole to tie the game. 

Yet while that breakaway, and two of the other three – Kris Versteeg’s breakaway wasn’t really Seidenberg’s fault given that it came during a line change – showed that the Bruins aren’t as finely tuned a machine as they were just a couple weeks ago, Rask’s saves (on the ones that managed to find the net – including a huge stop on Matthias in the first period) reinforced that Rask can indeed hang with Tim Thomas. 

In fact, if Rask is to keep up his incredibly high level of play, he could actually break the save percentage record that Thomas set just a season ago. The record, which belonged to Dominik Hasek before Thomas broke it, currently stands at .938. Rask’s 38 saves on 40 shots through regulation and overtime Monday bumped his league-best mark up to .946. There’s still half a season to played, but if Rask can sustain what he’s been able to do of late, the man who sat on the bench as the record was set last year just may be the one who breaks it this year. 

Of course, the record wouldn't put Rask's season on the same page of the history book as Thomas' 2010-11 campaign given that Rask would have set the record as the 1a in the Bruins' goaltending tandem. Yes, Thomas set the record last season while splitting time, but he did so with the majority of the starts.

Then there's the other thing to consider when wondering if the record is safe: the man who holds it. Thomas is currently tied for second in the league with a .937 clip, meaning he's in striking distance to break the record himself. 

Time will tell whether Rask's numbers end up being Thomas-like or if Thomas' numbers end up being, well, better than Thomas-like, but all of these numbers from Bruins' goaltenders have added up to put the B's in very good shape. 

SHOOTING FOR SUCCESS

Whether they love or hate the shootout, Bruins fans have to like the team’s results in them thus far this season. 

The Bruins improved to 4-1 this season in games decided by shootouts, a big improvement over their 2-6 mark last season. Their lone shootout loss this season was the Black Friday game against the Red Wings, which snapped the Bruins’ 10-game win streak. 

Yet after five shootouts and four wins, the Bruins have only one player, David Krejci, who has multiple shootout goals this season. Their best shootout weapon, Tyler Seguin, is a modest 1-for-5 on the season after going 4-for-8 as a rookie. 

So how have they turned their luck around in the shootout this season? You guessed it: goaltending. 

While Thomas was setting records last season, he was also struggling in shootouts, allowing nine goals on 19 shots during shootouts, good for a .526 save percentage. Rask wasn’t much better, as he allowed two goals on five shots for a .600 save percentage. 

Fast forward to this year, and Thomas is a perfect 2-0 in shootouts with zero goals allowed on eight shots. Rask’s save percentage is the same as it was last season in shootouts, but half of the four goals he’s allowed in his three shootouts came in that Nov. 25 game against the highly skilled Red Wings. 

The lone goal Rask allowed in Monday’s shootout came when he got a little too aggressive with a poke check attempt on a Stephen Weiss shot. When Rask came out of the net, Weiss caught on quickly and held the puck back, easily going around the netminder and sliding the puck in for an easy goal. That certainly wasn’t the worst Rask’s looked in a shootout (insert joke about milk crates), and this season has featured very few moments in which Bruins goaltenders haven’t looked good – regulation, overtime or shootout. 

Here’s an updated look at how Bruins’ shooters have fared in shootouts:

Tyler Seguin: 1/5

Rich Peverley: 1/3 

David Krejci: 2/3

Patrice Bergeron: 1/3

Benoit Pouliot: 1/2

Nathan Horton: 1/1