Bruce Boudreau rips referees – Ducks blog : The Orange County Register
“Some of the worst calls I’ve seen in a friggin’ long time,” he said. “A game of this importance, we can’t have officiating making calls like that. I mean, there’s three penalties that weren’t penalties.” Boudreau was upset at a first-period slashing call on Luca Sbisa and two second-period calls — tripping on Niklas Hagman and interference on Nick Bonino. He said all three “were not penalties. Not even close.”
The Sbisa slash on Jeff Carter that prevented a goal? The ref had a couple of slashes to pick from on that play (and a hook too; SEE PICTURE ABOVE). And the Hagman collision with Scuderi while the Ducks were on attack? I would have called it interference, but either way. Lots of tripping penalties are accidental or even incidental. “I didn’t mean to knock down the defenseman to create an out-numbered attack” is not really an excuse.
The Bonino penalty on Clifford, I’ll give you that one. It looked like incidental contact to me.
I understand that Bruce is really just sending a message to his team that he’s putting the blame for the loss elsewhere, but please. I’m curious (and this is a serious question) if any Ducks fans (other than “Haysie”) actually think those first two shouldn’t have been called.