Boston Bruins Postgame Quotes Boston Bruins Vs St
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BOSTON BRUINS POSTGAME QUOTES BOSTON BRUINS VS ST. LOUIS BLUES Thursday, June 6, 2019 BOSTON BRUINS HEAD COACH BRUCE CASSIDY POSTGAME On the officiating tonight… Well those are the hits they want to get out of the game, correct? Those are the hits that I hear a lot about, clearly they missed a couple tonight. It’s a fast game. I sat here two days ago or whatever it was and said I believe these officials are at this level because they earned the right to be here and you should be getting the best. The narrative changed after Game 3, there was a complaint or whatever put forth by the opposition and it just seemed to change everything. The non-call on [Noel] Acciari, their player is on his way to the box, it’s right in front of the official, it’s a slew foot. Our guy is gone. The spotter took him out of the game for a possible concussion. I mean it’s blatant and a big effect on the game. I mean this has happened and I’m a fan of the game, this is the National Hockey League and they’re getting a black eye with their officiating in the playoffs and here’s another one that is going to be talked about. I thought it was a great hockey game. That call probably, and there’s time, but it really made it difficult for us to get the win tonight. So I’m disappointed. So I guess to answer your original question, it was egregious. But we’re moving on and getting ready for Game 6. On the toughness of Zdeno Chara and hockey players in general for playing through injury… Well he’s a great example of that. He even came out and said it, he’s not the only guy. They’ve got guys, we’ve got guys, other teams I’m sure, Carolina, San Jose had guys that played hurt. That’s what you do this time of year. His injury is a little more serious than some. He was medically cleared with some warnings and he made the decision to play. Inspirational for us, good player for us, we knew he wouldn’t be 100% so we were happy to have him out there. But it just speaks a lot to his character and his will to play. Unfortunately [Matt] Grzelcyk was not cleared or he would have played too. But it didn’t happen so we weren’t able to use him. On what was being said on the bench after the missed call on Noel Accari… What was being said on the bench was that you missed an F’n call is what was being said on the bench for obvious reasons. After that we had to settle down and play. Listen we thought we got screwed but you got to keep playing and we did. We scored the next goal and gave ourselves a chance to win. We tried to rally around that moving forward. There wasn’t a lot of, you’re in the moment so of course you’re upset but I think players once they get back on the ice they’re not too concerned about that so that’s the way it finished. I thought that we responded well. We pushed to score, we did. We pushed again and gave up some odd man rushes as a result and Tuukka [Rask] made the next save to keep us in it but unfortunately we couldn’t get it by them in the end. On if there was any explanation for the non-call… No. I don’t expect an explanation for a non-call and I get that. They want to keep the game moving. Typically you’ll get, seldom you get an explanation unless maybe there is one of those challenges that the puck maybe was in, why are they reviewing it, something like that but typically they keep it moving. On if the extra defenseman is something that they’ll continue with going forward… Listen the reason we did that is that we weren’t sure on Zee [Zdeno Chara]. How much was he going to be able to play? How was the injury going to affect his breathing etc.? So we covered ourselves. I’m not going to get into every detail about our injuries but we felt that 7 [defensemen] was the best way to go to make sure that we were covered in case one of our defenseman wasn’t able to continue throughout the game. Up front 11, we lose David Backes’ presence, he’s a physical presence, we thought we could move some guys up with Krech [David Krejci] maybe use [David] Pastrnak a little more, [Marcus] Johansson so we thought we’d be ok there. That was the thinking behind it. On how the seven defensemen and 11 forwards affected the bench during the game… Well up front I thought that we were fine. I think one time that we did it, we got called for too many men as the forward group because we moved [Marcus] Johansson from right wing to left wing and two guys jumped once. Other than that it didn’t affect the forward group for the most part. Noel [Acciari] left for awhile so now you’re down to 10 so that’s even easier to sub one guy in and out. On the back end, I’ll talk to Kevin [Dean] about it to see how that rotation went. For the most part up front, I don’t think it’s that difficult, we’ve shortened our bench in the past, the players are used to it, we’re not a typical four-line team, we juggle lines a lot so guys are used to moving around. We don’t call lines, we call three names anyway so typically that works out for us. On how hard it is for the Bruins to not retaliate after seeing the Blues get away with penalties… Yeah I mean they’ll have to answer that. Clearly they get frustrated. They play a physical game and we expect to get hit. We’re not sitting here saying that we’re not going to get hit but there’s some that I think are calls that haven’t been made recently and that’s the only thing that will frustrate us. I thought we had some great hits tonight, clean, they may disagree. I thought it was a good, hard hockey game. We came to play, we were ready early but couldn’t score early on, might have been the difference in the game if we were able to get one, able to get the lead. I mean it’s always easier to play in the lead especially against a good defensive team like St. Louis, didn’t happen. I think our guys were more frustrated that we weren’t able to get the lead, more than worrying about what was called and what wasn’t, other than like I said, the obvious one that results in a goal. It’s a little different end. BOSTON BRUINS GOALTENDER TUUKKA RASK On his initial reflections on Game 5… We played good. Good enough to win. Just kind of a tough two minutes there and they got the lead. But we battled back. Yeah, played good enough to win. On his thoughts on the Noel Acciari non-call… What’d you think about it? Yeah it looked like a tripping, probably. Things happen quick, but it doesn’t help to complain about it afterwards. But, you know, I mean it sucks it was kind of a deciding play of the game. So, it is what it is. On if he saw the Acciari situation happen… Yeah. I saw it and he went down hard. The guy kind of came from behind and took his legs out and he was laying there for a second. So, just trying to focus on the play that’s going to happen and then you know they get a quick 2-on-1 there. Torey makes a play, bounce back their stick and it’s in the net. So, just a really really quick event there, but definitely just kind of shocked everybody. On what makes him confident about this team going into Game 6 to turn it around… Yeah, I think we’ve done a good job with that over the course of the year. We stay in the moment and we focus on the next game ahead. That’s always just the biggest thing that matters to us. Doesn’t matter if you win or lose, you focus on the next one and try to play good enough to win and now it’s, season’s on the line again, so we got to go out there and play our best. On if he figured it was going to be the type of series where you have to battle till the end… Oh definitely. Always have to battle till the end. You want to make it as easy as possible, but you’re in the finals so definitely not going to be easy. On what it meant having Zee out there tonight… Oh it was great. It shows his character. It takes a lot for him not to play. Yeah, he’s got some big balls. On if Zee was able to communicate much on the ice… Not a whole lot. BOSTON BRUINS FORWARD PATRICE BERGERON On how frustrating the game was… Yeah it is frustrating.