On Saturday afternoon, the Philadelphia Flyers took a 3-1 lead into the third period against the Boston Bruins at the TD Garden. They were 20 minutes away from securing a huge two points in the standings in the Eastern Conference playoff race. To compound matters for the Bruins, they have struggled this season scoring goals in the third period in games at home.
Boston scored two third-period goals from Trent Frederic and Brad Marchand to force overtime before David Pastrnak set up Pavel Zacha for the game-winning goal in a 4-3 Bruins win. Flyers coach John Tortorella has never been a coach to hold back his opinion win or lose. That was the case on Saturday.
Flyers coach John Tortorella blasts Bruins for diving in overtime loss
In the third period, Philadelphia was whistled for three penalties and six total in the game. Boston was only able to cash in on one of the power plays with Frederic scoring his first goal of the game in the second period at the tail end of a man advantage. The Flyers only had two power play's in the game. After the game Tortorella blasted the Bruins for he called "cheating" by diving to draw calls from the officials.
"Let me start,'' said Tortorella as he met with the media before taking a question. "One thing I teach my team not to do is dive. Maybe I should start teaching them that. The way this has gone here, the (expletive) that goes on, maybe I should teach them to dive.
"It's one of the things we talk about most as a team, we gotta play an honest game. There's no cheating, there's no embarrassing referees. You don't embarrassing the referees. The (expletive) that goes on here tonight is just ridiculous. I'm proud of the way our team played tonight. Did we piss another one way? Yeah, but other people had a lot to do with that.''
Did he have a case? Maybe, but truth be told, diving has been an issue in the NHL for a very long time. Sometimes if a referee thinks it's happening, they'll call embellishment. That didn't happen Saturday and Tortorella put the referees and Bruins on blast for it.