The alternate history of the Bruins' 6-2 win over the Lightning reeks of exceptionally bad luck -- not the kind you can chalk up to a few bad bounces.
The Lightning came closest to stealing Game 1 13:22 into the second period. Tuukka Rask's left skate blade fell out and Mikhail Sergachev capitalized on the situation:
Rask loses his blade and Sergachev scores pic.twitter.com/RqxtJTHpYM
— Marina Molnar (@mkmolnar) April 28, 2018That cut the B's lead to 3-2, and Rask had been trying to get an official's attention for seconds that felt like minutes. So yeah, he was pretty fired up.
"These freaking skates nowadays, the blades come off. I was yelling at the ref for 10 seconds," Rask told NBC after the game. "He didn't hear me. It sucks. I'm glad we won."
What sucks more is all that yelling and waving would've been pointless even if an official saw him
"There is no rule for referees to stop play for a broken piece of equipment, regardless of whether the equipment belongs to a goaltender or a skater," NHL Public Relations tweeted. The lone exception is when referees may stop a play after a goaltender has lost his helmet."
Regardless, Rask was sharp in net with 34 saves on 36 shots and a skate blade with a minus-one rating of its own.
"Tuukka had some really good saves that kept us in the game," Patrice Bergeron told NBC. "After that we got our legs going...but definitely have to give credit to Tuukks."
If momentum shifted in Tampa Bay's way you might've expected some harsher commentary on the situation, but with a big win it's just an odd blip in Bruins' history.
"You're gonna get some calls go your way, some aren't, tonight it looked like they didn't," head coach Bruce Cassidy said, also referring to David Pastrnak's penalty. "So we just kinda stayed with it."
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