Bruins Cassidy Questions Officiating After Taking High Road Before Game 4

Prior to his team’s 4-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues in Game 4, Boston Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy was asked about his counterpart, Blues head coach Craig Berube questioning the officiating in Game 3, a game in which the Bruins went 4-for-4 on the power play and won 7-2.

“We’re ready for a physical game and we’re not going to concern ourselves with the officials. Until they stink and they go against us, right?” Cassidy quipped.

Well, after seeing his team be the victim of some questionable calls, Cassidy volleyed back to Berube when discussing that with the media Tuesday. The B’s coach was asked if thought Berube’s comments about Game 3 has any bearing on the officiating in Game 4?

“I expect they wouldn’t get baited by somebody’s comments. They should be better than that,” he said. “I certainly didn’t expect them to. They should have a degree of professionalism, call the calls they see. That’s why the night before, I found it odd that we killed five power plays.”

One call that specifically left Cassidy bewildered, was an illegal check to head call on Bruins defenseman Connor Cliffton at 13:53 of the second period. As Cassidy pointed out, there appears to be no contact from Clifton but rather from Vladimir Tarasenko as he attempted a reverse hit on Clifton. It could even be argued that Tarasenko embellished to get the call.

This is a penalty in the Stanley Cup Final? Great sell-job from Vladimir Tarasenko pic.twitter.com/8XY5F31LbM

— Evan Marinofsky (@emarinofsky) June 4, 2019

“I think the call on Clifton was a head-scratcher,” Cassidy said. “Tarasenko went to reverse hit him. I don’t think there was any contact to the head, maybe his head. I don’t know where that call came from. That’s the only one I was unhappy with.”

Cassidy did, however, go back to Game 3 and wondered how the Blues got five powerplays in that game.

“I found it odd that we killed five power plays,” he said. “We scored on our four. One was in the last minute, so it’s inconsequential. One was on them. It wasn’t an infraction. They got called, challenging an off-sides. Really there’s a couple that they could look at that affected the game, I think one in the first period, one in the second.”

Bad calls or not though, Cassidy knows the Bruins need to be better and the refs were not the reason they lost.

“There’s always some that go your way that they could call,” he said. “It’s hard to nitpick through every one. That’s my thought on that. At the end of the day, we didn’t play well enough to win. We know that. We killed the penalties we were called on and scored on a shorthanded goal. We would have liked to have gotten on the power play a few more times.”