Joe Haggerty just shared what Marco Sturm said about Charlie McAvoy's unsportsmanlike conduct penalty in the Bruins' shootout win over the Golden Knights.
It came Monday night at TD Garden, in a game Boston survived 3-2 in a shootout. McAvoy had already been in the middle of the chaos, after his hit on Trevor Connelly early on.
Haggerty noted that Sturm was asked about McAvoy chirping the refs after Vegas scored a power-play goal with him in the box on a holding call that Haggerty described as iffy. The coach told him: "That's something he needs to control. That's on him. He's gotta be better than that."
That is a blunt message from a coach who doesn't dress things up. Sturm did the same after the Bruins' loss in St. Louis, when he ripped the team's effort, so nobody in that room should be surprised.
The numbers explain why it stings. McAvoy logged 25:36 of ice time in the game, more than any other Bruin in the sheet, and he finished with 6 penalty minutes. That is a lot of time to lose from your top defenseman, even if the Bruins found a way to win.
Vegas cashed in on the sequence. Mark Stone scored on the power play, one of the Golden Knights' two goals on the night.
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Boston picked up the extra point anyway. Morgan Geekie scored on the power play, and James Hagens also found the net, while Jeremy Swayman stopped 21 of 23 shots before the shootout.
Going into the game, the Bruins sat first in the Atlantic at 11-4-1. That record doesn't include Monday's result, but it says the team has room to absorb a mistake like this one.
Still, I don't love the pattern. McAvoy has 12 penalty minutes in 10 games this season, and a defenseman who plays that many minutes can't hand the opponent a power play over a call he disagrees with. Arguing a holding call is one thing. Earning a second penalty for it is the kind of mistake that costs points in a tighter game.
McAvoy's season is otherwise strong, with 8 points and a +6 rating. He has been a driver of this team, which makes the lapse easier to fix and harder to excuse.
The Bruins head to Pittsburgh on Thursday, and it will be worth watching how McAvoy handles the officials there.
