John Tortorella rips referees after Flyers loss to Bruins

One thing about John Tortorella is that he is going to tell you how he feels, no matter what the outcome may be. And he let it be known that he was not happy with the referees after the Flyers' loss to the Bruins on Saturday afternoon.

"It's one of the things we talk about most as a team, we've got to play an honest game. There's no cheating, there's no embarrassing referees. You don't embarrass the referees," Tortorella said after the game. "The s--- that went on here tonight was just ridiculous. I'm proud of the way our team played. Did we p--- another one away? Yeah, but other people had a little bit to do with that also."

The Flyers were penalized eight times against the Bruins. That's not to say that they didn't deserve some of them. Sean Couturier's stick did get into the skates of David Pastrnak. Cam York also took a couple of bad penalties. Travis Konecny was undisciplined in hitting Charlie McAvoy when he didn't have the puck. Something that ended up getting him benched toward the end of the third and overtime. He did have to miss some time after being pulled by the concussion spotter as well.

But Garnet Hathaway's stick barely tapped the shins of Mason Lohrei, who went down rather easily. The referee waited at least two or three seconds before putting the arm up. Charlie McAvoy tripped, cross-checked, and punched Michkov. He was only given a penalty for the first, while also splitting a roughing minor with Owen Tippett.

Tortorella made his thoughts known even before taking post game questions.

"Yeah, let me start. One thing I teach my team to do is not dive. Maybe I should start teaching them that, the way this has gone here, the way this shit goes on, maybe I should start teaching them how to dive."

While Tortorella is likely to face a hefty fine from the league for his comments, there's no doubt that he would do it again and again. He has always stood up for his team when he thinks they've been wronged. And you have to respect that about a head coach.

The players were a little more hesitant in commenting on the officiating. Sean Couturier talked about taking "dumb penalties" and needing to be better with that. He leaned into calling some of the penalties questionable but doubled down on the team having to put themselves in better spots. Travis Sanheim called them "unnecessary penalties" and agreed that you need to play through it despite being asked multiple times about it.

The Flyers do need to clean up their penalties, especially against top teams like the Panthers and Bruins. You can't give a team eight power play chances in one game. Even if they weren't burned by it and even if some of them shouldn't have been called. Regardless, you play the game in front of you and take it from there.