The refs whistled Boston's Milan Lucic for a high-sticking double-minor that led to R.J. Umberger’s game-winning power-play goal with 1:16 left in Columbus' eventual 3-2 win. That’s most likely why, when asked if the referees could explain the botched call, the response from an NHL representative outside the referees' dressing room was: “Talk to the coach."
Well, while Claude Julien didn't excuse the blown call by any means he wasn't about to blame his team's 3-2 loss to Columbus solely on that bad break.
“I’m not going to comment too much on that,” Julien said to begin his postgame press conference. “That’s called human error. It’s unfortunate and it is what it is. It’s human error. We still feel we had a chance to do something before that, and it didn’t happen.”
You have to give the coach and his players credit, because while they had every right to be frustrated and upset by an obvious mistake by the referees — and another bad break in a season full of them (there were 98 man games lost to injury before Thursday night) — the Bruins weren’t using the Lucic call as an excuse. They knew they had their chances to put away the game and prevent themselves from being in a situation where a bad call could determine the outcome.
Instead, they acknowledged their inability to close out the game with a solid third period after leading 2-1 headed into the second intermission.
“We played well for the first 40 minutes … and everybody knows that the empty net that David Krejci misses, if he scores on that, it’s 3-1 and I think our confidence is there,” Julien said. “When they come back a couple minutes later and tie the game, obviously we tightened up and you don’t want to see that necessarily. But that’s where we’re at right now. When you haven’t won on a consistent basis, it’s a normal tendency. We hung in there and had some chances, but the ending wasn’t meant to be by the looks of it.”
Lucic, who was forced to sit in the penalty box and watch Columbus steal away a game the Bruins could’ve won, was obviously upset. He didn’t necessarily think, however, that the Blue Jackets had stolen the win. Instead, he believed the Bruins let another slip away.
“I definitely didn’t feel like my stick got up,” Lucic said of the errant penalty. “I felt like it was below my waist the whole time, so it was unfortunate, but [the Blue Jackets] had an opportunity there. They stuck around, stuck around, and then got an opportunity at the end and they won the game. Obviously as a team, we had the chances to go up by two goals — 2-0, 3-1 — and we didn’t capitalize on our chances, so all in all, I thought it was a good team effort tonight, but we didn’t get the result we wanted.”
As Lucic pointed out, this was one of the Bruins' better efforts of late. Forward Patrice Bergeron, in only his second game back from a thumb injury, scored a goal and looked a lot more like his old self. Michael Ryder, who has been snake-bitten of late, got his second goal in three games and may finally be coming around. The Bruins also outshot the Blue Jackets 34-25 and were much more opportunistic than they have been recently.
But once again, they just couldn’t seem to close the door — and while this time it wasn’t a costly mistake by the B's that led to the opponent’s winning goal, they still left themselves in a position to lose.
“Frustrating, disappointing, I think you can use any adjective you want. When you lose, there is a lot of negative involved,” Bergeron said. “Certainly, we can find positive in tonight, too, but at the end of the game, we didn’t get anything out of it. We didn’t get any points.”
