Awful Officiating Didn't Ruin First-Rate Playoff Intensity And Other Leftover Bruins Thoughts
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- This may prove to be an unpopular opinion in the great city of Boston, but here goes: You have got to appreciate Game 2 between the Bruins and Lightning.
Yes, you may be a die-hard fan. You may have a Bruins tattoo. You may have six Bruins tattoos. You may have named your son Bobby Orr. You may have named your daughter Rae Bourque. You may be miffed about the officials, upset with the odd goal Tuukka Rask allowed, raging about turnover after turnover (after turnover) coming off Bruins sticks, and you may be beside yourself at the mere sight of those thunder sticks or whatever the heck they're handing out down there in Tampa, where you're not allowed to even wear a Bruins T-shirt.
But you have to appreciate that game. Every single body check was finished, and then some. Selling out to block shots was the norm, not the exception. Play moved. Goals were scored. And ultimately, the better team on this night won the game.
That's not be overly critical of the Bruins. Their intensity level was pretty good. Tampa's was just better. That tends to happen when a very, very good team is staring down the barrel of a 2-0 series deficit with both losses coming on home ice. They tend to respond. Tampa did.
Nearly every statistic shows that Tampa had more effort, more devotion, more hustle -- whichever platitude you want to throw their way. Shots (31 to 20), shot attempts (54 to 38), hits (42 to 24), faceoffs (33 to 25) -- they all favor Tampa, some by a wide margin. And the visuals matched up with reality.
As for what it means going forward, that's hard to tell. One would hope that no games going forward are officiated the way that one was by Kelly Sutherland and Eric Furlatt. You want to talk about choking on a big stage, you're going to want to start with the two men sporting orange stripes.
But it does likely mean that, as expected, the Bruins and Lightning are in for a long series. The Bruins may prove to be the better team by the end of it, but getting there will not be easy. Tampa made that very clear on Monday.
And while the process of getting there may prove to be excruciating at times, as it was in Game 2, one must remember that 23 fan bases would happily be in position to withstand that pain right now instead of being forced to get a jump-start on summer. Considering the Bruins themselves haven't been in the second round of the playoffs since 2014, Monday night was the perfect reminder of how intense these playoff games can be.
Game 2 may not have been the Mona Lisa for Bruins fans, but man, as playoff games go? That was the real deal.
Now, with very little time to rest before the teams hit the ice in Boston on Wednesday night, some leftover thoughts from the Lightning's 4-2 win over the Bruins.
--The game began, appropriately enough, with a Torey Krug giveaway. It came after Patrice Bergeron won the opening faceoff. It was, unfortunately for the Bruins, a sign of things to come. The stat sheet had them down for 13 giveaways. Too many of them came at the wrong time, in the wrong place on the ice, leading immediately to quality scoring chances for the Lightning.
--Something you just don't see every day is the 6-foot-4, 212-pound Adam McQuaid getting absolutely planted. But Ryan Callahan -- who's six inches shorter and 25 pounds lighter -- found the perfect opportunity to pull off the feat:
That hit right there was indicative of the physicality the Lightning were willing to bring to this game. They treated it like a Game 7.
--Credit to the Bruins, though, for withstanding the early surge. That to Tuukka Rask being extremely sharp early on, the Bruins managed to survive despite a 10-0 shot differential through 14 full minutes of hockey. Once the Bruins did figure out that shooting the puck would be a nifty way to try to score a goal, they came as close as can be to tying the game. But David Pastrnak's one-time bomb from the faceoff dot hit a post, a shoulder, and then another post.
--Bruins fans likely took issue with two major parts of Game 2. First was the officiating, which we'll dissect a bit later on. But second was the Bruins' insistence on trying too hard to make fancy passes in the offensive zone when the opportunities weren't really there. Even if a teammate crashing the net was covered up by a blue jersey, wingers would try to float passes to try to connect for a perfect goal. It reared its ugly head on Tyler Johnson's go-ahead goal midway through the second period, which came on a rush generated off a turnover by Pastrnak in the Tampa end of the ice.
In such instances, you'd think a shot on net with a chance for a rebound would be the smarter play.
It's a legitimate gripe, sure, but at the same time, there is a balance to be struck. After all, weren't most of us marveling at the puck movement that preceded Charlie McAvoy's goal late in the first period?
Likewise, we were all geeked up over Pastrnak's no-look feed for Bergeron's one-time goal in Game 1, right? It's one of those things where it looks amazing when it works and looks terrible when it fails. They could probably be a bit more selective when it comes to trying some of the more elaborate passes, but I think it's one of those things where you have to take the good with the bad.
--The Lightning's third goal -- which proved to be the game-winner -- also came off a bad Bruins turnover. But this one had nothing to do with trying to make a fancy play and instead was just a case of Brad Marchand ... doing ... what is this exactly?
Granted, it still required an absolute snipe from Ondrej Palat to score the goal, but when you turn the puck over at your own blue line this many times in a game, it's bound to catch up to you at some point. That giveaway was unforced and just careless.
--I'm not sure what Tuukka Rask has to do in order to get attention from on-ice officials, but apparently screaming at them and waving his arms just will not work. In Game 1, he lost a skate blade and then hooted and hollered to no avail to try to catch the referee's attention. In Game 2, the net was off its pegs and Rask tried to tell anyone who would listen that play should be stopped. It wasn't until he outright vacated his net entirely that anyone notice.
Nobody wants to pay any attention to Rask, despite his efforts. Poor guy. Sounds like me in high school.
--As for the work Rask did in the game when he wasn't trying to get a stoppage in play? It was strong. Strong to quite strong. Yes, the goal allowed to Johnson did not look good, as Rask tried to anticipate a shot to his blocker side, only to see the flubbed shot head toward his glove side. Rask didn't react to the shot, hence the ugly-looking goal.
But Rask more than made up for that goal allowed with some of the saves he made against the NHL's most potent offense to keep his team from getting blown out in this one.
He kept his composure when Anthony Cirelli was given a red carpet to waltz right in to the crease in the game's opening minutes:
Rask was likewise perfectly composed when the Lightning hit him with a pair of quality attempts in the opening seconds of the third period:
Later in the third, after a brutal turnover by McAvoy, Rask made his best save of the night on Nikita Kucherov (who's averaged 35 goals per season over the last four years):
Rask also made a good save early after adjusting to a Johnson shot that changed directions off Torey Krug's glove, he made his trademark casual toe save to deny a Steven Stamkos power-play one-timer, he denied J.T. Miller on a golden opportunity midway through the third, he fended off another Cirelli chance prior to Krug's goal late in the third, and he even managed to get his skate on Yanni Gourde's shot on the power play, though the puck still made it across the line.
I recognize it always makes a certain segment of Bruins fans angry -- for whatever reason -- to point out when the goaltender does good things, but Rask was pretty darn good in this game.
--Andrei Vasilevskiy is a Vezina finalist this year, and he had himself a decent night too, even if he didn't get a ton of work. The Bruins forced him to make just 18 saves to earn the win, though they weren't all created equally.
He moved well to his right to stop a David Krejci 5-on-3 one-timer, but not nearly as well as he moved to deny David Backes early in the second:
Vasilevskiy made a solid save on Jake DeBrusk early in the third, stopped a Bergeron redirect later in the period, and got a little lucky with a shaft save on Bergeron in the second. Sometimes a little luck is the difference. In any event, 20 shots on goal is not going to cut it for the Bruins in this series. The Lightning are too good.
--Yeah, yeah, hockey is great and all, but we don't see this nearly often enough:
Straight out of NHL '94 right there.
--Zdeno Chara blocked a shot with his stomach. I couldn't find a video or GIF of it, which is appropriate. Chara tends to do his most freakish things without garnering much attention. But let the record show: The man stopped a hockey puck with his stomach and didn't flinch.
--OK, fine, let's go: Officiating time.
The double-minor on David Backes for his actions in a scrum was a joke. The Krug slashing minor was a joke. The Tyler Johnson roughing penalty on Marchand was a joke. The double-minor on Pastrnak for high-sticking was an unfortunate mistake, but not exactly an out-and-out joke (it's a lot easier to see whose stick is whose in super slow-motion, high-definition replays). The Krug roughing penalty in a scrum was non-existent.
And the missed slash on Marchand's potential game-tying breakaway was an egregious failure.
And after Kevan Miller and Ryan Callahan each picked up wholly legitimate boarding penalties in the game, there's probably not a good explanation why Dan Girardi didn't pick up one for himself right here:
In a word, the officiating was terrible. There really shouldn't be an excuse for Sutherland and Furlatt to have that kind of a night. And while nobody can say "the outcome would have gone THIS way if not for the calls," the reality is that the impact of the officiating was much too great for a playoff game of this caliber.
The double-minor on Pastrnak was a particularly tough one. The Lightning may not have scored on the resulting four-minute power play, but that call basically drained four minutes of potential attack time for the Bruins in the third period, when they trailed by a goal. That was pretty huge.
But again, it can be difficult in real speed to see which stick actually hits a player's face, and mistakes like that tend to happen. Choosing to not call Stralman for a slash after knocking Marchand's low hand off his stick with a textbook slash on a breakaway? That's just inexcusable.
"A slash up around the hands, I mean that's an automatic penalty shot, let alone a penalty," Marchand lamented after the loss.
"He slashed him right on the hands. I mean it's ... I mean ... I just think it's unacceptable to miss that call, to get hit on the hands," Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said. "It's one thing if it's a judgment call on the stick, but on the hands is usually automatic. ... I think that should be called. My estimation, I disagree with the non-call. I think he hit him on the hands, and [Marchand] clearly loses possession of the puck. That's an infraction."
Cassidy also said: "We're on the wrong side of, I think, three or four calls tonight that impacted the game."
There's nothing the Bruins can do about it now, of course, except hope that things change when the series shifts to Boston. As it is now, the Lightning have been given seven power plays to the Bruins' four.
(And Marchand is probably going to want to continue playing instead of raising his arm and looking to the ref for a call, too.)
--And lastly, uhh ... there was this guy. This fella who went to the game. And made a sign. This sign:
All right.
Game 3 is Wednesday.
You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
