Cowan: Canadiens fans left chanting ‘Ref, you suck!’ after Game 4 loss to Lightning

Life, death, taxes and lousy officiating in the NHL playoffs

Those are four of the certainties in life, and the latter was on display Sunday night at the Bell Centre when the Canadiens lost 3-2 to the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 4 of their first-round playoff series.

Canadiens defencemen Mike Matheson and Alexandre Carrier go after Tampa Bay Lightning forward Jake Guentzel after he slashed Habs goalie Jakub Dobes during second period of Game 4 in Montreal on Sunday night. John Mahoney / Montreal Gazette

The best-of-seven series is tied 2-2 with Game 5 slated for Wednesday in Tampa and Game 6 for Friday back at the Bell Centre.

The Bell Centre crowd spent a good part of Sunday night chanting: “Ref, you suck!” They were chanting that again as the players left the ice after the game.

Referees Brandon Blandina and Wes McCauley called eight penalties against the Lightning and nine against the Canadiens, including some questionable ones on both sides, along with some missed calls.

Just another playoff night in the NHL.

But the call that really hurt Montreal was a high-sticking penalty on Oliver Kapanen only 51 seconds into the third period after the Lightning’s Jake Guentzel had cut the Canadiens’ lead to 2-1 with 54 seconds left in the second period. Zachary Bolduc and Cole Caufield (on a power play) had given the Canadiens a 2-0 lead with goals earlier in the second period.

Replays during the game showed a referee’s arm going up after the Lightning’s Dominic James threw his head back while Kapanen’s stick wasn’t near his face. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman showed another video of the play on X after the game with Kapanen actually high-sticking James seconds earlier, but the ref’s arm never went up until James later threw his head back.

It looks like the referees missed the real high-stick and then called the reaction to a phantom high-stick.

The Lightning’s Brandon Hagel scored on the ensuing power play to tie the game 2-2, and then Hagel scored the winning goal at 15:07 of the third period when a shot by Nikita Kucherov hit him in front of the net.

The Canadiens’ Mike Matheson was upset with the referees when he was called for high-sticking at 10:44 of the third period, shortly after the refs missed an obvious high stick to the face of his teammate Jayden Struble. The Canadiens’ Jake Evans was then upset at 11:33 of the third period, when he was called for cross-checking Kucherov, who slid into the boards and then lay on the ice writhing in pain.

The Lightning trainers who came on the ice to tend to Kucherov must have had some of that “magic spray” soccer trainers use to help players come back from what looks like near-death injuries to run around the pitch again shortly after. That spray worked on Kucherov, who was back on the ice during the ensuing power play, but the Canadiens were able to kill off the five-on-three that lasted 1:11.

Kucherov was then upset when he was called for slashing at 17:27 of the third period, which might have been payback from the officials for his injury acting. But the Canadiens couldn’t capitalize on the ensuing power play, even after pulling goalie Jakub Dobes to make it six-on-four.

Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis wouldn’t have seen the video Friedman posted when he did his post-game news conference and I asked him how he deals with his frustration on phantom penalty calls.

“I’m just going to lean on Seinfeld on that one,” St. Louis said before biting his lip.

St. Louis was referring to his comment earlier in the series when he said he likes to watch Seinfeld episodes to wind down and get to sleep after stressful games, adding that George Constanza was his favourite character on the TV show.

As a follow-up to my first question, I asked St. Louis what Constanza would say about the refereeing. Someone in the back of the room said: “Serenity now.”

St. Louis laughed and said: “Exactly.”

On a more serious note, St. Louis said his team didn’t handle the momentum swings in the game well enough.

“I think we put ourselves in situations where there’s a chance the ref’s going to call a penalty,” the coach said. “That’s a veteran team. They’re very good at drawing penalties. They got talented players. They’re a tough team and we knew it was going to be a tough series. We’re right in it. We’re in a battle. It’s a fine line between winning and losing in these games, but we’re battling.

“We could have had more composure, for sure,” St. Louis added. “Especially when you’re ahead, you definitely want to have more composure.”

Canadiens defenceman Kaiden Guhle kept his composure after the game when asked about the officiating.

“A couple of calls on both sides, probably, that were a little off,” he said. “Game happens fast for them (referees), too, sometimes. That’s all I’m going to say about that.”

What about the frustration of seeing Kucherov make his miraculous recovery after falling into the boards?

“Yeah … frustrating,” Guhle said with a tight grin.

Apart from the officiating, this is turning into a great series, and you can see why the two teams finished the regular season tied with 106 points and why the first three games all went to overtime.

“They’re a good team and so are we,” Canadiens defenceman Mike Matheson said. “It’s two good teams going at it.”

As for the officiating, Matheson said: “It’s definitely frustrating, but we can’t control it. You can get upset about it, but it’s not going to help you win games. Like I said, it’s out of our control and we got to keep focusing on the things we can control.”

We now have a best-of-three series between two very evenly matched teams.

Hopefully it’s not the officials who eventually decide the winner.

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