Lightning coach Jon Cooper furious over overturned calls in Panthers’ Game 5 win
SUNRISE — Before the Panthers started peppering the back of Tampa Bay’s net with goals in their series-clinching 6-1 win over the Lightning on Monday night, the game hinged on a crucial call.
Tampa Bay appeared to take an early 1-0 lead on a goal by Anthony Cirelli, but Florida coach Paul Maurice challenged the call.
The challenge succeeded. The goal was overturned, and the game was tied again.
Later in the game, the Lightning appeared to tie the game, but the referee waved off the goal immediately. Tampa Bay challenged the call and lost, keeping Florida in the lead. The Panthers went on to rout the Lightning and advance to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
After the game, Lightning coach Jon Cooper criticized the decision-making on those calls during a four-minute-long diatribe at the end of his postgame press conference.
“This is clearly a turning point in the game,” Cooper said. “If anybody’s going to talk about this game, they’re going to talk about the goals that were taken away. In this league, where goals are at a premium and all we’ve done is make the rules for more goal-scoring … but there’s mandates, the words were to pull a goal off the board, it has to be unbelievably egregious. That’s the standard to pull a goal off the board. Well the first one’s on the board, and I couldn’t find anything remotely egregious about that.”
“It’s really tough. Forsling is holding on — it’s a full penalty — he’s holding onto Duclair, so he’s trying to yank, he’s trying to get his balance. It really doesn’t affect nothing. Bob misses the puck, and it’s a net-front battle and it’s in the net. That’s just the part for me.”
On the second Lightning goal taken off the board, Cooper thought there was nothing more than incidental contact that could have interfered with Sergei Bobrovsky.
“So now we have to rebound from that, we do, and then the next one is a net-front battle,” Cooper said. “I will give the goalie credit. He quit on the play. He completely quit. Didn’t see it, didn’t whatever, then flailed. There was maybe incidental conflict at most, but now we have to challenge it because they saw the reaction of the goaltender.
“Bob … duped them, and so be it. So now we have to make that challenge. It’s like, well then are net-front battles aren’t allowed anymore? That’s part of everybody’s game. It’s like the boxing out that goes there; it’s like prison rules in the playoffs, but it’s not prison rules for the goalie the second something happens? We might as well put skirts on them then if that’s how it’s going to be. They have to battle through stuff, too. … I think we’re letting the goalies off the hook. They’ve got way more pads on than everybody else does.”
Cooper said he thought the calls went against “the spirit of the rule” for goaltender interference. He added that his complaints did not change the fact that the Panthers won the series decisively, but he does think the calls changed the momentum in Game 5, at minimum.
“Especially in the playoffs, come on, how do you let those slide?” Cooper said. “Does this, by any means, say we were going to win the series? It does not. But would it have changed a lot of the momentum in this game and the way things had gone? I think so. … This conversation that’s going on in my head, but Florida won the series. They won the series 4-1. It wasn’t 4-3. … They did a lot of work for this.”
When asked about the calls and Cooper’s opinion on them, Maurice considered his words for a moment before answering.
“I’m not a believer that things even out, but maybe that changes my belief or moves it slightly,” Maurice said. “I don’t believe that it all washes out at the end of the year at all. But I feel a little better about my relationship with everybody.”