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Explaining the “too many men” penalty

Image (1) Bruins4-thumb-200x300-11555.jpg for post 1618

After all of the “too many men” penalties we’ve seen in the playoffs, it was inevitable that one would occur in historic fashion. The Boston Bruins were trying their best to fight off the Flyers in the third period of Game 7, having already given up a 3-0 lead and were close to finishing off a monumental collapse.

Then, the team was caught with too many men on the ice and the Flyers scored to go-ahead goal on the ensuing power play. The first thing I thought of was the too many men the San Jose Sharks weren’t caught with against the Red Wings (although that was far from a deciding factor), then my next thought was this had better not be a ticky tack call.

Was it legitimate? A mix up involving Marc Savard and the bench led to too many men involved in the play. There were two centers out on the ice, something a number of the Bruins players noticed immediately. Chad Finn of the Bruins Blog passes along these explanations from the Bruins:

“We had a player [Savard] with his stick up like he wanted to make a change, then he changed his mind,” coach Claude Julien explained. “So we had the next center [Sobotka] jumping on”

“I saw two centermen out there, and I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ "" Lucic said of the penalty, which happened at the 8:50 mark of the final period. “Obviously something happened, there was a miscommunication and we had to get off before we got caught. We got caught.”

According to the Bruins, Savard skated over for a change but didn’t see anyone coming on so he stayed on the ice. The Bruins weren’t able to cover up the gaffe quick enough and were caught. It certainly seems as though a legitimate call was made, especially when this wasn’t just an instance of a lazy change resulting in too many men actually out on the ice. This was a mistake by the bench.

Apparently, Mark Recchi and Shawn Thornton didn’t agree with the call, but when the coach isn’t making a stink about it generally that means a good call was made.

“Well, I want to play a couple more years in this league so I don’t want to bad mouth [the officials] too much,” Thornton said. “I do think . . . I had a pretty good seat for the third period, and I was close to where the guy was changing and I think it was very, very, very gutsy call with seven minutes left with all of the other [expletive] that’s going on out there.”

Of course, this loss can hardly be pinned on the penalty or the ensuing goal. This loss was about the Bruins failing to keep the pressure on after grabbing a big, this was about the Bruins once again lacking the killer instinct needed to win four straight elimination games.