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Photo by Fred Chartrand / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Whether the hit actually made a difference was subject to debate, but in a game where the Bruins were on the wrong side of a few controversial calls, it also helped serve their argument that they needed to fight through a little bit of everything en route to victory.

Wideman had a rough night. He was on the ice for both Bruins goals in regulation time. The goal that tied the game 2-2 came after Sean Kuraly’s wraparound attempt bounced off Wideman’s skate and past Senators goaltender Craig Anderson.

Wideman barely played in the third period and overtime, finishing with 11:19 of ice time as Senators coach Guy Boucher went primarily with Erik Karlsson, Dion Phaneuf, Marc Methot, Ben Harpur and Cody Ceci on defence. It will be interesting to see if Wideman is bumped in favour of Freddy Claesson for Game 6.

The usually outspoken Boucher had little to say when asked about Wideman’s hit and words, along with Cassidy’s comments.

“I don’t even know anything about that,” Boucher said.

Cassidy became a prominent figure during the game. The Bruins thought they had scored the winning goal earlier in overtime and thought they deserved at least a power play when Senators centre Jean-Gabriel Pageau stopped the puck with his hand near the goal-line.

“All you had to do was look at the (video scoreboard) to see how I felt about it,” Cassidy said later with a smile. “There was a little bit of a composure issue there, but I’m a passionate guy and I felt that they did not go our way, and I voiced my opinion and moved on.”

As the game went on late into the night, he began to feel as if it was going to be the Bruins’ night after all.

“It just seemed liked there was too much,” Cassidy said. “Two breakaway goals, to kill the unnecessary penalties … once you get through some of that, you almost feel like we’re good now. Nothing seemed to break our way. You never know how it was going to turn out, but we weren’t going quietly.”

kwarren@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/Citizenkwarren