SUNRISE, Fla. — Trent Frederic admitted he was pessimistic when the referees skated over to the scorer’s booth and pulled on the headset in the second period of their 2-1 win in Game 5 on Tuesday at Amerant Bank Arena.
The Bruins have had big and little calls and no calls go against them through five games of their best-of-five series with Florida, so he was expecting the worst.
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“There’s no way they’re going to call it a good goal,” he said, but then admitted. “I didn’t see the replay.”
The play in question was Charlie McAvoy’s wrist shot from the slot that beat Sergei Bobrovsky to give the Bruins a 2-1 lead. Panthers coach Paul Maurice challenged that Danton Heinen had bumped his goal, who’d lost his stick.
The tension was heightened because in Game 4, Sam Bennett pushed Charlie Coyle into Jeremy Swayman and then scored the tying goal. The Bruins thought that goal was going to be overturned and it wasn’t. That followed no penalty or punishment for Bennett injuring Brad Marchand on a hit to the head in Game 3.
Faith that a call, any call was going to go there way was low.
According to David Pastrnak, McAvoy was “freaking out” on the bench.
McAvoy laughed at the characterization.
“Just hoping. He seemed squared up to me,” he said. “He didn’t look like he was interfered with.”
Jim Montgomery was preparing for either result.
“I was thinking ‘Make sure you send the right message to the bench no matter what happens,” he said. “‘Hey we’ve got to get them on the power play. Let’s just keep playing. Next play. Next shift.’”
When the officials went to the microphone and pointed to center ice, the Bruins exhaled.
“It hasn’t been going our way. It was nice that one did,” Montgomery said.
McAvoy agreed.
“Happy that that went our way,” he said. “You never know with these things.”
