Let’s start with the necessary disclaimer: The Bruins did not lose 5-1 Tuesday night because of the refs. They didn’t fall behind 4-0 because of the refs. It’s not the refs’ fault they’re getting virtually zero 5-on-5 production outside of their top line.
That said, it’s hard to ignore just how bad the officiating was in Game 5, and has been all series, and really has been all playoffs around the whole league.
Let’s stick to this game for now, though. It felt like déjà vu midway through the first period. With the Hurricanes already leading 1-0 and already having gotten the game’s first power play, a scrum broke out in front of the Bruins’ net, and somehow Boston ended up with the only penalty.
Carolina’s Max Domi initiated the scrum by pushing his way to the top of the crease after the whistle had already blown. Derek Forbort and Charlie Coyle grabbed Domi, and then Forbort and Domi exchanged a couple quick jabs. There was no real punch, no ripping off helmets, nothing that seemed to go above and beyond your typical post-whistle scrum.
Yet Forbort got a penalty and Domi didn’t. It was an inexplicable decision by the ref to create a Hurricanes power play out of nothing, out of a situation that clearly should’ve been either matching penalties or nothing at all. Tony DeAngelo scored a power-play 56 seconds later to double the Hurricanes’ lead.
The same thing happened in Game 2 in Raleigh. With the Bruins already on the penalty kill, a scrum broke out at the end of the first period when Jesperi Kotkaniemi hit Brandon Carlo right at the buzzer. There was some pushing and shoving both ways, but again, nothing that seemed over the line. For some reason, though, Carlo got the extra two minutes, turning the Hurricanes’ 5-on-4 into an extended 5-on-3 that they eventually scored on.
“No, not surprised at all,” Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said when asked about the call on Forbort. “We knew what we were facing coming in here after the last game. We just have to do a better job on the penalty kill if our number’s called. We’ve been very good on special teams up until tonight. They were the better team on it. But I’m not surprised, no.”
The Forbort call wasn’t the end of the frustration on Tuesday. In the second period, Charlie McAvoy got called for a pretty ticky-tack interference that negated the rest of a Bruins power play. It was probably technically an interference, so if you just want to say the refs were calling it tight, fine.
The problem is that they didn’t call it tight a little over a minute later when Jaccob Slavin made basically the same type of play after Curtis Lazar chipped a puck past him. Instead of turning and chasing after the puck, Slavin stepped in front of Lazar -- like McAvoy stepped in front of Sebastian Aho -- and rode him just about into the Bruins bench. No call on Slavin, though. And a Carolina goal less than a minute later to make it 3-0.
There was also a knee-on-knee hit from Ian Cole on Tomas Nosek and a crosscheck from Aho to David Pastrnak’s back that went uncalled. In the sake of fairness, there was also a terrible holding call on DeAngelo that went against the Hurricanes, although that came when the game was already out of reach.
“We’ve had to kill some penalties here, so we have to get it done,” Cassidy said. “It’s that simple. For whatever reason. I don’t want to go into details. It just is what it is. We’ve been on the short end of it here, so we have to make sure our penalty kill is air tight.”
There isn’t some grand league-wide conspiracy against the Bruins. If the NHL actually wanted to influence the outcome of this series, it would be in favor of Boston -- bigger television market, more star power, more national appeal in a second-round series against Pittsburgh or New York. The officiating just stinks. It stinks league-wide. Maybe the refs are being influenced too much by the home crowd in this particular case.
Regardless, the Bruins have certainly been on “the short end” -- as Cassidy put it -- of a lot of calls in Raleigh in this series. It’s not why they’re now facing elimination, but it’s frustrating nonetheless.
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