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Boudreau rips Pietrangelo’s ‘cheap’ hit on Parise

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Blues' Alex Pietrangelo sends a message for Game 5 with a massive hit to end their Game 4 loss to the Wild.

Minnesota head coach Bruce Boudreau was happy, quite obviously, with his team’s 2-0 win over the Blues on Wednesday night -- the Wild’s first victory of the series.

But he wasn’t happy with the way it ended.

On Thursday, Boudreau sounded off on St. Louis captain Alex Pietrangelo for a hit on Zach Parise with time expiring.

“It was cheap,” Boudreau said, per Wild radio host Kevin Falness. “It was cheap. They knew the game was over, there was one second left.

“If this was 1984 or ’78, that guy would’ve had a stick right in his face. But they don’t do that anymore.”

Pietrangelo wasn’t penalized for the hit, which set off a fairly large scrum to end the contest.

Today’s remarks could be seen as further gamesmanship from Boudreau, who’s desperate to keep his team alive after it fell into a three-games-to-none series deficit. The veteran bench boss began pulling out the stops prior to Game 4.

From the Star-Tribune:

In a ruse to throw the Blues off his scent, Boudreau deployed four forward lines in pregame warmups that were different from the ones he used in the game.

The cunning coach, who was visibly and audibly uptight earlier in the day, scrambled everything and went with the publicized lines from Tuesday’s practice.

“When you’re down 3-nothing, it’s ‘all the tricks are out of the bag’ type thing,” Boudreau said.

Game 5 of the series goes on Saturday at 3 p.m. ET, from Minnesota (on NBC).