Craig Berube works the referees, because not much works for the blues

Jordan Binnington will return to the net and the Blues think his new porosity was a stroke of luck, and Oskar Sundqvist will be back after serving his suspension of a match. So they are not only ready to miss out on their shitkicking of the third match, excuses for that. Most. Down 2-1 in the Stanley Cup final, St. Louis lacks time to train properly and use every last lap of the bag to take advantage. To this end, head coach Craig Berube took advantage of his press conference Sunday to complain about the refereeing. Despair? Or just good, to the old, working the referees? Why not the two of them?

The Bruins have beaten the Blues, say, in seven of the nine periods and more in this series, and it may be because they are better – they are – but it has also been difficult to judge because they shredded St. Louis on the powerplay Boston scored six of his 13 goals with a benefit of being a player and, on Saturday, the PP unit was 4-on-4 on four shots.

In three games, the Blues have been penalized 17 times and 14 times shorthanded, compared to just 10 power-play opportunities for St. Louis. Berube does not say; he just says.

"First, we were the least penalized team in the league in the first three rounds; now, suddenly, we took 14 penalties in a series, "said Bérubé. "Then I do not know."

It is true that the Blues have averaged less than three penalties per game in the first three rounds of the series, before being whistled at least five times in each game of this series. But the difference is also relatively easy to explain by their correspondence with Boston. The Bruins are quicker and more competent, and the St. Louis game plan for this series was precisely to try to slow them down by being physical. This means that you have to check, finish the controls and put the bodies on bodies in the neutral zone, and sometimes it works, as was the case in the second match, but most often in this series, it whistles . The difference between the physicality and the offense is tenuous, and the Blues' obvious frustrations with the skating circles around Boston have generally placed them on the wrong side of this line.

Berube recognized him.

"I think we could be calmer after the whistle. I think we have let some frustration get to where we may be doing too much after the whistle. So, let's clean that, of course. But as I said, we were the least penalized team in the league at the start of this series. I do not agree with all the calls. "

It's not very useful to look at the large number of calls without going step by step and to see how much has been done, sometimes a team really does a lot of penalties, and I have a hard time getting in imagine. Berube knows it. His goal is not to involve some kind of NHL conspiracy against the Blues. This is to make twice tonight's officials on calls at the border and to provoke the reaction of the local crowd. Many researches indicate that the noise of the crowd is the most influential factor among the officials.

Bérubé wants more than anything that officials act more like stereotypical zebras who swallow their whistles in the final. Of course he does; "Letting them play" would be good for the Blues, and punish the Bruins, whose 35.9% playoff power play is the second-best all time (with at least 15 games). There are only a few games left, so now or never for Bérubé's game.