Boston Bruins Stadium Series Circus | Snap Shot 71

0:00 Speaker 1: What do you get when you combine high entertainment value, a national audience, and clowns. You might say the circus, but you'd be wrong. It was the twenty twenty six Stadium Series between the Boston Bruins and the Tampa Bay Lightning. Let's get into it. This is a Bruins tape to tape snapshot.

0:23 Speaker 2: I'm going to make this snapshot short and less than sweet. This is coming to you from Tampa, Florida, where I had the opportunity to attend the stadium series game between the Tampa Bay Lightning and our Boston Bruins, and the Boston Bruins ended up with a loser point after allowing the Tampa Bay Lightning to come back into the game after they had a five to one lead. And I will get to the officiating, which I believe was one of the most egregious and disgusting displays that I have seen the league put forth in quite some time.

1:03 Speaker 2: But let me start with where I think things went off the rails, and I'm going to start with our goalie, Jeremy Swayman. The Bruins had things well in hand in the second period. They had a five to one lead. The Tampa Bay Lightning looked listless and lifeless after scoring on their first shot of the game very quickly into the game. And what does Jeremy Swayman do. He decides that that's a good time to engage with Vassilevski in a goalie fight. Dude, what were you thinking? Now we all know that you have not kept its secret that you have wanted to engage in a goalie fight for quite some time.

1:47 Speaker 2: But to pick that opportunity and allow the Tampa Bay Lightning to gain the momentum that they did, and the pendulum swung in the total opposite Director and Jeremy, that fight blew up in your face, and it blew up in the face of your teammates where you allowed the Tampa Bay Lightning the opportunity to get back in that game. So, between you and the officials, it was a shit show, I'm sorry to say, a total shit show. You got to point, the Bruins got to point out of it, but I would have preferred the two points.

2:30 Speaker 2: And as far as the officiating goes, David Pasternak is absolutely correct. It was a freaking joke. And I knew the minute that the Tampa Bay Lightning went down five to one. I was waiting for when the officials were going to start to feel bad for the Tampa Bay Lightning and start making calls against the Boston Bruins. Well, there you have it, folks. Now, I'm not going to go so far as to say the game was rigged, but I will tell you the people that were sitting in the section of the building that I was in, they were Tampa Bay Lightning fans that turned to me and said, this looks like it might have been a little bit staged and rigged.

3:15 Speaker 2: And I didn't argue with them about that. Be that as it may your team. Our team still allowed Tampa Bay to score four unanswered goals and then ultimately lose it in a shootout. As far as the game day production went, I have been to all of the outdoor games that have involved the Boston Bruins. This by far was the worst game day set up and presentation that I have seen. Not a great job by the NHL with the gamesmanship, the showmanship, and the officiating.

3:54 Speaker 1: Maria is exactly right. The Bruins had complete dominance over the Tampa Bay Lightning for the first thirty minutes of this game. Not only did they have total control, the Bolts straight up looked bad, taking the same kind of lazy penalties we've seen sink the Bees. And Vassilevski was no powerhouse goalie either. He looked about as bad as I have ever seen him. I don't know what was happening down on ice level, but I think it's pretty obvious that the on ice officials were not doing their job of de escalating the situation.

4:27 Speaker 1: And as we who have watched hockey all of our lives know, if you don't take care of that on the ice, the players will take it into their own hands. And clearly the Bruins felt that the on ice officials were not addressing the chirping, pushing and shoving appropriately. I'm not saying that the Bruins didn't deserve some of those penalties in the back half of the game. Some were stupid bad luck, like Swamon's delay of game, puckover glass and Coral's hand on the puck, and some of the players were letting their emotions get the better of them with the push and the shoving.

5:01 Speaker 1: But the blatant lack of calls against Tampa in the final half of the game is what ruined this game for me and countless fans. The holds, the cross checks, interference and more that I didn't see get equally called against Tampa. It was a joke and a top it all off, the referees committed the ultimate sin. They interfered with the result of a game. It is mind boggling to me that the referee at the far end of the ice who witnessed the stick in fraction by Pasta, did not blow his whistle when the Bruins took possession, and only did so after a goal had been scored.

5:49 Speaker 1: It is so inexcusable. I never want to see that person at the NHL level ever again. I don't care who your team is, who you're rooting for. It's a disc disgusting joke and the league needs to address this. I don't think I have ever been so mad at officiating in my life. You can hear us rant and rave some more about this later this week. Our weekly episode will be delayed by a day or two, so make sure you rate and review the podcast to help us reach more listeners, and tune in weekly to our full podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and all podcast platforms.