BOLTS OUSTING BRUINS NO BIG SHOCKER
Lightning’s enviable depth is the class of Eastern Conference, possibly the NHL
Tampa Bay is the best team in the Eastern Conference, if not the entire NHL.
It’s becoming increasingly harder to argue.
The Lightning finished third overall in the regular season standings behind Nashville and Winnipeg, despite leading the league with 54 wins. Now they are a formidable 8-2 in the playoffs. The five-game elimination of New Jersey wasn’t a big surprise, but swiftly disposing of the Bruins — who finished one point behind them during the season — was impressive. Especially after Boston won the series opener by a 6-2 count.
“For whatever reason, we came out (to start the series) a little flat,” captain Steven Stamkos said on the post-game podium Sunday. “It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to get beat like that. I think it woke us up a little bit.”
After that win, the Bruins had seven goals in the remaining four games. They didn’t get one at even strength after Torey Krug scored in the third period of Game 2.
Tampa’s trade-deadline acquisitions played huge roles in putting down the Bs.
J.T. Miller scored the winning goal and Ryan McDonagh had a stellar game alongside shutdown blue-line partner Anton Stralman. McDonagh made the defensive play of the game when he broke up a 2-on-1 against David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand with 12 minutes left.
“It’s not like after 89 games we forgot how to score,” Bruins coach Butch Cassidy said of his team’s offensive woes.
“Their ‘D’ core is big and they move the puck. To get inside, you really had to work. I felt they did a good job with us, not letting us get inside.”
The Lightning now get to sit back, rest and watch the Penguins and Capitals beat themselves up. Whichever one emerges from that series is going to have its hands full with the best team in the conference, if not the entire NHL.
It happens far too often that a player gets suspended when he didn’t even earn a penalty on the play in question.
In a sense, the league is throwing its own under the bus. “You couldn’t even see it as a two-minute minor? We think it’s worth three games,” it might as well be saying to the referees.
Well, the roles were slightly reversed Sunday in Tampa.
After much deliberation, the league decided against any supplementary discipline on Marchand for his second licking incident of the playoffs in Game 4 against the Lightning.
And in Game 5, the refs made it clear Marchand wasn’t going to get away with anything on their watch.
While killing a penalty in the Tampa zone just past the midway mark of the first period, Marchand was hauled down by Victor Hedman, who was getting called for holding. At the same time, Marchand was sent to the box for embellishing.
If Marchand did dive, it wasn’t obvious. He might have twisted himself a bit while going down, but Hedman’s grab was sending him to the ice either way. The easy and right thing to do would have been to send Hedman alone, especially since Bruins forward David Backes was already serving a weak interference penalty.
But no, Marchand was being incriminated for past crimes.
Marchand argued and argued, but after that he barely made a peep the rest of the game.
The Bruins’ top left-winger was certainly not himself. He was afraid of playing near the edge for fear of drawing penalties.
And he was very much ineffective.
At one point, Marchand turned away rather than finish his check on a defenceman, allowing the Lightning to freely take the puck up ice. Throughout the game, his timing was off, his passes were off.
After recording 30 shots in the first 11 games of the playoffs, Marchand had zero with the Bruins facing elimination.
The Bruins had a difficult enough time creating offence against the Lightning, but it was made tougher with referees Gord Dwyer and Chris Rooney in Marchand’s head.
Maybe that was how the league planned to make him pay all along.