The Bruins can blame a ref — and themselves — for Game 3 loss
COMMENTARY
Like much of the rest of New England, I possess a keen insight into the Bruins’ 4-3 overtime playoff loss to the Ottawa Senators on Monday: Refs are stupid.
It’s all too simple, and yes, briskly accurate, to blame referee Tim Peel for his ridiculous decision during the extra period. In a game during which the Bruins had fought back from certain doom, down 3-0 to the Senators in the second period, Peel used judgement not often applied to Ottawa defenseman Marc Methot during the game to send Boston forward Riley Nash to the penalty box for a roughing penalty that ended up leading to his team’s demise. There was no such punishment for a stick-less Bobby Ryan, slamming Nash’s forehead to the boards, leading to the Bruin’s retaliation. It was Ryan who ended up netting the game-winner, 5:43 into OT.
Stupid refs.
“Demoralizing and disappointing,” Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said after watching his team fall into a 2-1 hole in the opening round of the postseason. “There’s probably a lot more words, but they called it. Once they call it, it’s our job to kill it.”
No dice.
Nash was apologetic rather than apocalyptic afterwards, a decided reversal of the ire that filled the Aquafina-tossing reaction in the seats at TD Garden, hosting its first playoff hockey game in three years.
“I think it was pretty selfish of me,” Nash said. “You can’t make that play. You can’t put the refs in that position regardless of what happened before.
“I think that’s just playoff hockey, but it’s just one of those things that, a dirty play here, a dirty play there…it doesn’t matter. You’ve got to bite your lip and just take it.”
Alas, it wasn’t all Nash’s fault that Peel put the Bruins a man down at a critical juncture. Just as it wasn’t all Peel’s fault that Boston started the evening with a seeming Patriots’ Day tribute to climbing its own Heartbreak Hill on ice.
Erik Karlsson took advantage of the Bruins’ first defensive breakdown of the evening to send Mike Hoffman a laser pass that the Ottawa forward sank under Tuukka Risk for an early 1-0 lead. Thirty-five seconds later, Derick Brassard seemed to have time to ask Rask about the happenings of his day before sinking another one past him. Then, early in the second period, Hoffman scored on a power play, and the once-rocking Garden turned back into the same, somber atmosphere it had only 24 hours earlier when the Celtics gagged against the Chicago Bulls in Game 1 of their playoff series.
Ugly.
But the second period also housed the Bruins’ redemption. Noel Acciari delivered his first playoff goal, only 42 seconds before David Backes slapped the puck past Ottawa goalie Craig Anderson. Then with Dion Phaeneuf in the penalty box for slashing, David Pastrnak scored his own first playoff goal to bring the Bruins back from the brink.
‘‘We were allowed to play in the second and third, we were a better team,’’ Pastrnak said. ‘‘We had many opportunities to end it in the third.’’
But the Bruins couldn’t cash in on any of their nine shots in the third, during which Anderson stymied them long enough for overtime.
That’s when Boston got jobbed.
It’s any guess what Peel was watching in the seconds before Nash decided to land one on Ryan near the boards, but his decision to penalize Boston while giving Ryan the opportunity to deliver Ottawa the win was even criticized by the normally-reserved Pierre McGuire, the NBC announcer behind the boards who generally pops off with the frequency of Ned Flanders.
“That’s got to be matching minors,” McGuire said while watching replay of the incident. “I mean, honestly, if you’re going to set the standard, you’ve got to call it the right way. I have no skin in this game at all. But if you’re going to set a standard, you’ve got to call that both ways. That’s a hit to the head. That’s got to be called. Then, if you’re going to call the next one, call it. That’s not well-done at all.”
You don’t often hear Pierre McGuire get this fired up, but he’s not wrong pic.twitter.com/f1UjENtvhM
— Pete Blackburn (@PeteBlackburn) April 18, 2017
Peel is the easy target.
But he didn’t breathe lifelessness into the Bruins at he start of the game either.
“We did a good job coming back, but it’s not good enough and in the playoffs, it doesn’t matter, really,” Brad Marchand said. “We’re not battling for a point. We’re trying to get a win. We did show good character coming back, but we’re not going to win many games letting ourselves get down 3-0.”
The Senators are back for Game 4 Wednesday night. So are the refs.
Stupid.
