Bruce Cassidy generally is mindful of how he discusses officiating.
There’s no faster way for the NHL to get its coaches to open up their wallets than by fining them for criticizing referees. So when the Boston Bruins head coach was asked Friday for his impressions of the officiating through three games of their second-round series against the New York Islanders, Cassidy started cautiously.
“Are you setting me up?” the coach quipped over Zoom.
Then, thoroughly, he explained why he has largely been content with the stripes, and only has had one gripe with the way the series has been called.
“I think the Islanders play a clean, hard game, and I think I’d put us in that category. I think teams that play us, there’s always an incident here or there, a team will say, ‘Hey, that was a little close to the line,’ but I think in general we’re known as an honest team. I think the Islanders are known as an honest, team, so that’s what you’re getting: Two teams that are willing to be physical, finish checks but, again, play hard between the whistle. Try to do things the right way.
“As for the officials, I do think physically, for the most part, it’s been a good series that way. I guess I took a little bit of an issue with — they singled out (Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak), two of our elite players on retaliatory stick fouls when it’s not too hard to watch (J-G) Pageau cross-check and slash Marchy coming to the bench in the exact same penalty Marchy got called for and Pasta got called for. So, you’d like to see consistency in that area of the game, I even have a hard time believing they missed that, everyone saw it and that’s the only problem I’ll have. If you’re going to take one team, then take the other. It’s like the scrums to me, if you’re going to pull one guy out early from one team, then there’s probably going to be a scrum later when that situation can be dealt with where we stay consistent.
“So that’s my gripe, but we need to be more disciplined in those situations. Most teams in the playoffs will be hard on your skill (players), they’re trying to be hard on our skill, so you’ve got to keep your discipline. So, I think they missed one last night, but at the end of the day we were able to kill the penalties that we took and they were able to kill theirs. But, yes, I do think the officials are doing a nice job in this series for the most part in that regard, with the physicality, but I also think the hits have been above board and clean. So, there’s really not that much to look at in that regard, either, so good for them for keeping it moving.”
The Bruins and Islanders will play Game 4 at 7:15 p.m. ET Saturday on NBC. NESN will carry a full hour of pregame and postgame coverage, plus intermission reports on NESN.com.
