When you allow seven goals in a playoff game against a team as talented as the Tampa Bay Lightning, what the officials call, or don’t call is far from the whole story, and surely not the lone reason your team came out on the losing end of a 7-1 beat down in Game 3.

Despite Wednesday being a night where nothing went right for the Bruins, and a night where the reasons behind the Bruins loss were far too many to count on one hand, head coach Bruce Cassidy was not pleased with the officiating in the game's first period.

The first period we were fine. I think if you look at all the numbers pretty even,” said Cassidy. "Obviously, couple of breaks didn't go our way, couple of questionable calls in my estimation obviously didn't help, and then you chase the game.”

In what was a two goal opening period for the Lightning, Cassidy was dissatisfied with three instances where he felt the officiating impacted the game.

The first was the penalty called on Brandon Carlo 37 seconds into the contest. The Bruins managed to kill Carlo’s tripping penalty, but it was a call that set the tone in the wrong way in Cassidy’s mind.

“Not even sure Brandon’s was [a penalty],” said Cassidy.

Shortly after Carlo’s penalty, the Lightning would open the scoring on Ondrej Palau’s second goal of the series. A goal that came with Nick Ritchie in the box for slashing.

Once again, a call Cassidy did not agree with.

"A call on Ritchie happens 100 times a game, we happen to get flagged for it, right?” Said Cassidy “Complete disagreement with that particular infraction.”

In Cassidy’s eyes the third and final first period strike by the officials came on a play you rarely see in the National Hockey league.

It wasn’t a penalty called against the Bruins, nor one that wasn’t called against the Lightning. It was when linesman Devin Berg set an accidental pick on Bruins defenseman Jeremy Lauzon allowing Yanni Gourde to race in all alone on Jaroslav Halak, giving Tampa an early two goal lead.

“Second goal, I mean come on, the linesman runs our D out of room. Good for Yanni Gourde for taking advantage of a break given to him,” said Cassidy. “But I mean, when do you see that play happen in the National Hockey League.”

As frustrating and unusual as the play that led to the Lightning’s second goal of the night was, it was the two penalty calls that really upset Cassidy.

“You’ve got an official injecting themselves into a game with two of the best teams in the National Hockey League playing that I thought that wasn’t necessary personally,” added Cassidy. “But, that’s his decision, he’s here for a reason.”

After falling behind 3-0 in the second period the Bruins got themselves briefly back into the game with Brad Marchand’s power play strike.

But that was the last positive from the Bruins that came in the game as the Lightning went to to score four more times in the contest.

“We’re going to have to move on from this game. Obviously, not our best game,” said captain Zdeno Chara. “We realize that was one of those games that nobody wants to look at. Definitely something that we have to move forward from and get ready for the next one.”

It was a game that had controversy surrounding it before the opening puck drop.

On a night where the NBA, MLS, MLB and WNBA all had games postponed due to boycotts in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake, the NHL went on as planned, playing Game 3 between the Bruins and Lightning, followed by Game 3 of the Avalanche and Stars series.

By the time the players of both the Bruins and Lightning were catching wind of what was going on across the sports world, it was a little too close to puck drop for them to start moving things around.

“Like I said it was so close to our game, we obviously took – after our pregame meal we took naps and then we were on the bus. I don’t think any of us were watching the TV until we got to the rink and then at that point it was too close to the game to start any discussions or making, trying to change the, move the games to different dates. We had the afternoon game and we were just basically following the schedule that the NHL provided to us,” said Chara.

“We support NBA players and all the leagues that showed their support. “We support the fight against racism and injustice. There are different ways to express that fight and obviously NBA players expressed their opinions by boycotting the games today. We support it.”

Lightning defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk had a similar sentiment about the timeline as Chara did.

“With our team, we played (Tuesday) night, we played today, we really didn’t find out that the other leagues had taken their stance until we got here tonight,” he said. “I think for us it is something we found out by the time we got to the rink and something we’ll have to address going forward.”

While many –including NHL’ers Matt Dumba and Evander Kane—voiced frustration with the NHL playing their two games Wednesday night, Bergeron approves of Dumba’s statement.

I support Matt Dumba.

Hockey is not important right now. pic.twitter.com/P1Y6Vr1oh8

— Caroline Cameron (@SNCaroline) August 27, 2020

“Yes, I think – and I’ve said that before. It starts with everyone. I’m part of that. Zee is part of that. We all need to find ways to be, like I said, part of the solution,” said Bergeron. “My statement doesn’t change, my stance doesn’t change. I want to be a part of it. And yeah, I stand against any type of racism and injustice. And yeah, I want to be a part of that.”

Game 4 is scheduled for Friday night.

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