Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy was probably hoping he didn’t have to answer questions about the officiating for a second straight game, but it was a topic that unfortunately was impossible to avoid after Boston’s 5-4 Game 5 loss to the Islanders Monday night.
There’s no point in beating around the bush, so we won’t: Referees Francis Charron and Francois St-Laurent were straight-up terrible, and their ineptitude overwhelmingly hurt the Bruins.
Throughout a first period in which the Bruins dominated possession, they let every piece of stick work by the Islanders go while they chased the Bruins around the ice. That’s fine… sets a relaxed standard for the night, right?
Except then they called Bruins forward Sean Kuraly for a play where he barely touched the Islander he was defending, never mind slash him.
While the rest of the three penalties called against the Bruins were good calls, the Islanders got away with several clear penalties and seemed to consistently get the benefit of the doubt while Boston did not.
Just in the second period alone, a Travis Zajac hook on David Krejci, a Brock Nelson high-stick on Patrice Bergeron, and a Kyle Palmieri high-stick on Craig Smith all went uncalled. When Chris Wagner committed a high-stick later in the period, the Bruins weren’t lucky enough to have the refs miss that one.
When asked what he thought about the officiating after the game, Cassidy had a lot to say, both about the officiating itself and about what he believes is a narrative the Islanders have sold that they’re a clean team that doesn’t take penalties.
“I think what happens, and this is my take on it, is we’re playing a team that has very respected management, coaching staff. They won a Stanley Cup. But I think they sell a narrative over there that it’s more like the New York Saints, not the New York Islanders,” Cassidy said. “They play hard, they play the right way, but I feel we play the same way. The exact calls that are getting called on us do not get called on them, and I don’t know why. These are very good officials. They’re at this point in the season for a reason.
“You’ve got continuous high-sticks every game, the exact same high-sticks. Bergy from Nelson behind the net, the one that comes up on Smith. Marchy got called for that in Game 1. I could go on and on -- Wagner the other day in front of the net. Maybe we need to sell them more, flop, but that’s not us. You just hope they see them. The same calls go against us. It’s not like I’m sitting there going, ‘Every call against us sucks.’ That’s not true.
“It’s just at the end of the day, the similar plays, they need to be penalized on those plays. But like I said, I think they’ve done a great job selling that narrative that they’re clean. They play hard, a hard brand of hockey. Love the way they play, but they commit as many infractions as we do, trust me. It’s just a matter of calling them. That’s the part that I guess gets frustrating, but you play through it.”
Cassidy also took exception with Islanders coach Barry Trotz’s comments on Sunday about Bergeron “cheating” on faceoffs. Whether the two were connected or not, Bergeron did get thrown out of the faceoff circle several times in Game 5.
“It’s like with Bergeron today. He’s thrown out of, what, the first two, three, four faceoffs he takes because someone mentioned… You know, have a little respect for Patrice Bergeron,” Cassidy said. “He’s up for the Selke, he’s been a warrior in this league, face of the franchise, does everything right for hockey, sells the game. And that’s the way you treat him? I mean, come on. Because someone speaks out and says something all of a sudden.
“They just need to be better than that. Just call the game that you see. Quit listening to these outside influences and get it done right. I don’t think they were great tonight. I’m not gonna lie to you. But they have been. They’re good officials. I know those two guys. They’re good guys, good officials. I don’t know. Tonight I just thought they were off. He can say the same about us, but that’s what I thought. Let’s just play hockey and call the infractions that happen and we’ll see where it goes.”
Cassidy was then asked if he thinks the officiating has had a direct impact on the outcome of games. He said he thinks it did Monday night, while also noting that the Bruins needed to do a better job killing penalties, as the Islanders scored on each of their first three power plays.
“Today it did. There’s no doubt it did,” Cassidy said. “Now we’ve got to kill the penalties, we’ve said that all along. There’s a call and then there’s two minutes you’ve got to kill. We broke down. We’ve got to be better on the penalty kill. We have all year. From the blue line back, today wasn’t our best. When we’ve broke down, we’ve gotten the saves in the past. That didn’t happen. Our penalty kill was good all year. There’s no reason to think it won’t get better. It was great against Washington. But it’s got to do it in a hurry. And again, some of that is personnel.
“Does it have an effect? You’ve got to put it out of your head. You just feel that deep down, some guys are like, ‘Jeez, I’m getting the same treatment and we’re going to the box.’ So mentally it could get you, but we can’t allow it to. At the end of the day, you asked me the question, I answered it.
“We try not to every bring it up in the room, because it’s something out of our control. We try to talk about what’s in front of us, what we can control, and that’s that. That’s all we’ve ever done, and that’s what we’ll continue to do. Maybe Game 6 will be our day, where we get the calls to go our way. Maybe not. I don’t know, I can’t look into the future, but we’ll be ready to play. It’s do-or-die for us, so we better be ready to play.”
When asked about Cassidy’s comments, specifically his “New York Saints” remark, Trotz told reporters, “You’ll have to ask him about that. Just look at where we ended up during the year. I think we were one of the least penalized teams in the whole league. So I don’t know what he means by that. You’ll have to ask him.”
For the record, the Islanders were in fact the third-least-penalized team in the regular season. The Bruins were the fifth-most-penalized.
The Bruins will look to avoid elimination in Game 6 Wednesday night at Nassau Coliseum.
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