"But when you look at the replay, there's no reason to even attempt to blow that whistle. That puck wasn't frozen. It was nowhere near frozen. It was in. In no time.
"To me, that was just a real tough call to swallow because we're back in the game, 2-1."
Instead, the Senators scored a power-play goal at 17:18 of the second period, making it a 3-0 game, and they coasted to a 4-1 victory before 20,143 at Scotiabank Place. The Bruins didn't put in a puck until Dennis Wideman popped home a Marc Savard rebound with 2:26 remaining.
The Bruins remain in seventh place in the Eastern Conference, 5 points behind Ottawa and 1 ahead of eighth-place Philadelphia.
"Little frustrating right now because we're not scoring goals," Julien said of his dull-as-C-Span offense. "We created some chances. But as a group, we've got to somehow find a way to score. That's our responsibility.
"Everybody has to take the responsibility of bearing down, getting their nose a little dirtier, and finding a way to score goals. Because nobody's going to give you any."
The waved-off sequence started when Marco Sturm, on one of the rare power-play scoring chances the Bruins had (0 for 5, five shots), walked the puck out of the right corner and jammed a close-range shot on Martin Gerber. As the Ottawa goalie got a piece of the puck, Sturm went tumbling into Gerber as he was dumped by defenseman Chris Phillips. With the puck still in play, Murray whacked the rebound into the cage. But O'Halloran ruled that he intended to blow the whistle to stop the play before Murray got to the puck.
"That was a big goal for us," said Murray, who hasn't netted a goal during the 1-3-2 stretch. "It would have made it 2-1. Different game there. We've just got to work hard. Keep working. No excuses. Just work, work, work. It's going to go in."
Two of Ottawa's four goals came directly after Gerber (28 saves) and his defense foiled sparkling Boston scoring chances. In the second period, after a scoreless first 20 minutes, P.J. Axelsson sprung Phil Kessel for a breakaway. Kessel threw several dekes on Gerber. But the goalie stayed with him, stopping a last-ditch wrister with his left pad.
