Boston Bruins

Bruins burned by iffy call, late goal in loss to Leafs
March 21, 2017, 5:20 AM ET [123 Comments]
Ty Anderson
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Rarely does the most important game of the year live up to the billing.

But in the case of Monday night’s showdown between the Boston Bruins and Toronto Maple Leafs -- who entered play separated by just three points in the Atlantic Division -- the marquee matchup was just that. For 60 minutes, the Bruins and Leafs matched shot for shot. Hit for hit. Coaching mindgame for coaching mindgame. It had everything you could want out of a late March playoff primer game.

It was the last game you’d want to see decided by a marginal penalty.

So naturally that’s exactly what happened in what finished as a 4-2 final for the Maple Leafs.

As the Bruins pressed on towards Frederik Andersen’s crease, Dominic Moore was engaged in a battle with Nikita Soshnikov in front of the crease. Soshnikov, with the awareness as to where Moore was going, was bumped and sprawled down onto the ice. The official’s arm went up, and the the league’s best power play went to work with the game on the line and less than three lefts in the third period.

Neat.

The Leafs made the B’s pay, too, as Tyler Bozak scored the game-winner after a flurry in front of the B’s net that featured numerous sensational saves from Tuukka Rask, who stopped 25-of-27 in defeat.

“It was a great game until the [Moore] penalty,” a frustrated Bruins interim coach Bruce Cassidy said after the game, adding that the call against the Bruins in that situation was ‘egregious’.

With the loss, the Bruins suffered back-to-back defeats for the first time since Cassidy took over for Claude Julien back in February, and are now just one point ahead of the Leafs for third in the division.

This and that

- Look, I get it: Bitching about the referees is the loser’s lament. But everything about this call was just plain brutal. To that point, the referees had let so much nonsense go earlier in the game -- be it Kevan Miller high-sticking Auston Matthews in broad daylight, Torey Krug practically hugging a Maple Leaf forward in the B’s zone, to Brad Marchand’s by all means flop to draw a penalty against the Leafs later in the game (has his star status earned him some calls now?) -- that to suddenly blow the whistle on an iffy call with 2:54 left in a tied game with playoff ramifications is just plain terrible.

All I want is consistency, really. If everything is going to be let go for the enjoyment of the game and in respect of the atmosphere/stakes/whatever, let everything go for the full 60 minutes, not 57. That doesn’t do any good for anybody. Well, ‘cept the team that’s gift wrapped the power-play opportunity.

- Refs, refs, refs. I know. But let’s ignore the shoddy at best call against Moore for a second and admit that this game was basically everything you didn’t want to see from the Bruins after last week’s debacle in Edmonton. Too many passengers, not enough drivers. The Bruins’ best line was probably their fourth line. This team is not good enough to have that happen and win the game. Period.

- Brad Marchand was held without a shot on goal in a game for just the sixth time this season. Marchand had three attempts in total -- two were blocked and one was a missed shot -- and the Bruins are now 1-4-1 when he posts a zero on the shot board. That’s far from a shock, I know.

- This was the 10th time that the Bruins have allowed their opposition to score the game-winning goal with under five minutes left in the period. It’s happened in the third period on six different occasions. So, that’s six points you’ve left on the table thus far. Not gonna get it done.

Up next

The Bruins are back at it on Tuesday night against the Senators. The Bruins trail the Sens for second place in the Atlantic Division by just four points, but have yet to beat them this season. It’s worth noting, however, that this will be the first head-to-head played in Boston between the two foes.

Ty Anderson is the Boston Bruins beat writer for WEEI.com, and has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010. He can be heard on the Saturday Skate program on 93.7 WEEI (Boston), can also be found in the New England Hockey Journal magazine, and has been part of the Boston Chapter of the PHWA since 2013. Contact him on Twitter or send him an email at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.