Bruins question why pivotal Panthers goal upheld
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Greg Wyshynski, ESPN
BOSTON — The Boston Bruins disagreed with the officials’ decision on a failed coach’s challenge for goalie interference, one that let the game-tying goal stand in their Game 4 loss to the Florida Panthers on Sunday night.
The Panthers, down 2-0 in the opening period, went on to win the game 3-2, scoring twice in the third to take a 3-1 series lead.
At 3:41 of the third period, Florida’s Sam Bennett scored to tie the game at 2. The goal was immediately challenged by the Boston bench. Replays showed Bennett had cross-checked Bruins forward Charlie Coyle onto goalie Jeremy Swayman before scoring into an open net.
The on-ice officials reviewed the call and determined “there was no goaltender interference on the play.” The official ruling from the NHL Situation Room was that “video review supported the referees’ call on the ice that the shove by Florida’s Sam Bennett on Charlie Coyle and the subsequent contact with Jeremy Swayman did not prevent Swayman from playing his position in the crease prior to Bennett’s goal.”
Boston was given a minor penalty for delay of game because of the failed challenge. The Bruins killed that off, but Aleksander Barkov‘s goal at 7:31 of the third period ended up winning it for the Panthers
Rule 69.1 of the NHL rulebook states that: “If a defending player has been pushed, shoved, or fouled by an attacking player so as to cause the defending player to come into contact with his own goalkeeper, such contact shall be deemed contact initiated by the attacking player for purposes of this rule, and if necessary a penalty assessed to the attacking player and if a goal is scored it would be disallowed.”
Based on that criteria, Coyle and Swayman strongly disagreed with the officials’ decision not to overturn the Bennett goal.
“My momentum hits him so he can’t get over,” Coyle said. “It’s a huge swing. They score, tie the game and get a power play out of it. We saw something different. They saw something different.”
Swayman reiterated several times that Coyle impeded his ability to play the puck.
“The fact is that Coyle was pushed into me. I couldn’t play my position. So that’s that,” he said. “In the moment I didn’t know what exactly happened. I just know I couldn’t play my position. And the review showed that.”
0:50
Sam Bennett evens score with clutch power-play goal
Sam Bennett takes advantage on the power play and nets a huge goal for the Panthers to even the score against the Bruins.
Boston coach Jim Montgomery calmly disagreed with the call in his postgame news conference.
“[The NHL Situation Room in] Toronto ruled that it was a good goal. That the player didn’t interfere with the goal. That’s the explanation I got,” he said. “We thought that Coyle was on top of our goaltender, and if Coyle was able to stand his ground, he could have cleared the puck. That inhibited our goaltender from being able to react to play in the puck.”
Swayman believed that the Bruins wouldn’t challenge the goal if they didn’t see evidence that it should be overturned.
“I know that our guys aren’t going to call a challenge unless they know what’s going to get reversed,” he said. “Again, I just want to stick to facts, and the fact is that my own player was pushed into me by theirs and I couldn’t play my position.”
The Panthers saw it differently.
“So I’ll have an opinion and it would be ‘no’ in that it will have no impact on the play of the game and then the player,” coach Paul Maurice said. “The connection between the two, the contact between the two is not egregious at all, and the play just gets finished more than anything else. That’s in the situation book and it’s in the [NHL hockey rules] reel.”
Bennett said he wasn’t concerned that the goal wouldn’t count.
“I wasn’t surprised. I mean, I think they got the right call,” he said. “[I’m] putting that puck in before Swayman’s going to be able to get over whether Coyle is on him or not, so I think that’s the reason why it stood. And that’s how I saw it, as well.”
Bruins fans booed loudly when Bennett’s name was announced as the goal-scorer, like they did all night when he touched the puck. Boston captain Brad Marchand missed Game 4 because of an upper-body injury, with replay angles showing Bennett deliver a punch to Marchand’s face when the Boston winger tried to check him in Game 3. No penalty was called on the play, and the NHL Department of Player Safety decided not to discipline Bennett.
“It’s just one of those plays where he’s coming to hit me,” Bennett said in discussing the incident for the first time after Game 4. “I’m trying to brace myself. There’s no way I would have had time to think about punching him in the face like everyone.
“But people can have their opinions. I know it definitely wasn’t intentional. I’m bracing myself as he’s coming to hit me. Obviously, he’s a heck of a player and a big part of that team. So it’s unfortunate, but by no means was that an intentional punch in the face.”
The Bruins said there wasn’t any extra frustration that it was Bennett who scored the disputed equalizer.
“I don’t know who scored goals. I don’t look at players, it doesn’t matter,” Swayman said. “It went in, and that’s frustrating enough. So my job is to keep pucks out of the net. So that’s all I care about.”
The Bruins now return to Sunrise, Florida, for Game 5 on Tuesday, facing elimination by the Panthers for a second straight season.
“I couldn’t be more excited to get down there and bring it back to Boston,” Swayman said. “The reality is that we’re going to go to Florida and we’re going to play the same game and we’re going to get it done. And I have no doubt in this group and we have a lot of confidence and a lot of motivation to bring it back to Boston because our fans deserve a lot better, and we’re excited to do that.”
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Joey Logano wondered Tuesday if Baseball Hall of Famer Chipper Jones ever had driven a race car at Talladega after the former Atlanta Braves slugger criticized the NASCAR champion in a series of social media posts.
Jones was defending Austin Cindric, the winner of Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway, after Team Penske teammate Logano unleashed an expletive-laden rant about Cindric around the halfway mark of the race. Logano was furious he did not receive the help he needed from Cindric, which allowed rival Toyota driver Bubba Wallace to win the second stage and earn valuable bonus points.
“Way to go, Austin. Way to go. You dumb f—. Way to f—ing go,” Logano said on his team radio. “What a stupid s—. He just gave it to him. Gave Toyota a stage win. Nice job. Way to go. What a dumbass.”
Jones was angered by Logano’s rant and in six social media posts congratulated Cindric, called Logano selfish and celebrated Logano being disqualified for failing postrace inspection.
“Good teammates are hard to come by, Boss! Remember that one of urs MFed u on national tv, when in all actuality, u did everything possible to keep from wrecking him,” Jones wrote. “Some people are ‘hooray for our team as long as I’m the star’ as every team has them. Hendrick, RCR, JGR, Penske, etc. Sometimes karma is glorious.”
When told of Jones’ comments on a Tuesday appearance of SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s “The Morning Drive,” Logano said he was unaware of them. Once he was told, Logano asked: “Has Chipper Jones ever driven a race car at Talladega? That would be my first question. I’m pretty certain he hasn’t.”
“That’s like me saying something about baseball. I know nothing about baseball,” Logano said. “That’s like me saying something that he did something in baseball that was wrong. That doesn’t matter.”
“Chipper Jones, he seems like a cool dude, he’s done a lot, right? He’s a pretty popular, good baseball player, but he’s not a race car driver, and I know he wasn’t in the room with us when we set in place the way things are supposed to go.”
Joey Logano on SiriusXM
Logano continued by saying that as a former professional athlete, Jones should understand there was more to the situation than what he saw on television. Jones grew up outside Daytona International Speedway and was once the grand marshal for the Daytona 500.
“Chipper Jones, he seems like a cool dude, he’s done a lot, right? He’s a pretty popular, good baseball player, but he’s not a race car driver, and I know he wasn’t in the room with us when we set in place the way things are supposed to go,” Logano said. “You would think somebody that has been in professional sports and has been in meetings like that would probably take a step back and say, ‘Man, there’s probably more to the story here than what there is.’ I’m surprised it went that way. Maybe he was just bored. I don’t know what his situation is. I tell you I don’t care.”
Logano said he and Cindric cleared the air in Penske’s Monday meeting.
“Austin and I talked about it. We’ve got to move forward. That’s what it is,” he said. “I explained my side. He understood. We move on. There’s no sense in airing our dirty laundry and airing out what the actual rules are because that’s private information that doesn’t need to be out to everybody. But the facts are that what we set in place wasn’t happening and that’s why I got frustrated. Like I said, we talked about it and we moved on.”
Logano did acknowledge that he probably should not have hit the radio button and “spouted off so much.”
“Probably blew up into a little bigger situation than it needed to, but the conversation, either way, needed to happen. Just more people are talking about it now,” he added.
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