Sjostrom: Green shouldn't be penalized (update)

 Michael Obernauer, The Blueshirts blog, Apr. 17, 2009:

This came a day after Tortorella complained about what he saw as discrepancies in the referees' standard of penalties - specifically, Mike Green not being penalized for his hit on Fredrik Sjostrom but some ticky-tack calls going the other way.

For the record, Sjostrom, who said yesterday that Green's hit mostly knocked the wind out of him, told me today that he hasn't watched a replay of the hit and wouldn't necessarily say that Green should have been penalized. "I don't think he's going out there trying to hurt someone," Sjostrom said.

That's obviously Tortorella's mind games. No way it was a penalty. Even if Sjostrom would be carried on the stretches, the hit still stands as a clean hit.

It has been very interesting duel of words between Tortorella and Boudreau. Both are excellent speakers, obviously Gabby has his nickname well worth it, but Torts is very good at it too, putting pressure on refs, the players and the public.

Update:
Corey Masisak, Apr. 18, 2009:

Boudreau also took offense to John Tortorella's comments yesterday about some the Caps' face-off wins not being on the level.

"They won the game, and all he did was cry about the two things we won about -- faceoffs and a penalty," Boudreau said. "He's playing the whole game and it is actually pretty lame, quite frankly."

"He's talking about Nicky Backstrom, who was 48 percent this year and one of the worst centermen the first half of the year in faceoffs altogether. We went in and talked to the league and the league said they were perfectly legal, so he is just crying right now. It is a pretty dumb thing to be crying about."

"I haven't said nothing except for responding [to Tortorella]. We were told not to do this, but he is trying to play the gamesmanship and get the referees on his side. That's fine. They'll probably do better on faceoffs today. What am I supposed to do? Cry? We never had 70 percent on faceoffs all year, so we had one good day on faceoffs."

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