Jon Cooper appears to blame officials for loss to the Leafs, makes additional excuses for the loss

The Leafs clearly used that one-liner from Cooper as motivation, absolutely dominating the Lightning in a 4-1 win last night and holding the Lightning to under 10 shots until midway through the third period. At one point, the line of Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Michael Bunting had 17 shots which was the same amount of shots the Lightning had as a team.

Following the game, likely the Leafs' best of the season, Cooper dropped another one-liner, except this time it was aimed at the officials.

"That was a complete game. A complete game of you-know-what," said Cooper, indicating he was not pleased with how the officials handled the game. It is ironic because he was praising the officials throughout the playoff series when calls were going Tampa's way. Cooper also indicated that showing up to Toronto 3 days early likely played a role in his team's uninspired performance.

The Leafs had 2 power plays last night to Tampa's 1, so it's not like Tampa spent a bunch of extra time in the box. Not only that, but there were a number of missed calls on Lightning players, such as a missed boarding call on Nikita Kucherov and the blatant slash Mikhail Sergachev gave Michael Bunting at center ice as Bunting was heading off for a line change.

Tampa and Cooper have to be some of the biggest whiners in the league. Every time they lose a game, it's not about how well the other team played, it's about the "missed" or "non-calls" that would have put the Lightning on a power play that cost them the game. Sometimes the Bolts are not the better team, Jon. Last night was one of those nights. Give the Leafs credit for the way they played, because they earned every bit of that win.