BOSTON — In case anyone had any doubt, Bruce Cassidy had a bullet-quick answer to the final question of the 2016-17 Bruins’ season.

Do you want to be the coach?

Bruins veteran Patrice Bergeron, when asked about interim Coach Bruce Cassidy, said, "I thought he was great. He definitely deserves to be back.” The Associated Press

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“Absolutely,” Cassidy said, “one hundred percent.”

And with that Cassidy walked off the podium at TD Garden after Clarke MacArthur buried the Bruins by burying a power-play goal to lift the Ottawa Senators to a 3-2 overtime victory in Game 6 of the opening-round of the NHL playoffs.

There is no real reason why the “interim” designation shouldn’t be erased from Cassidy’s title. His team finished 18-8 down the stretch to get into the playoffs for the first time in three years. Unlike Claude Julien, Cassidy wasn’t locked into stubbornly, relentlessly rolling the same four lines. He was willing to tinker, willing to investigate possibilities as the Bruins’ management worked to incorporate more youth into its roster.

Cassidy’s team showed mettle in forcing four overtimes in the series. Showed mettle in the face of half his defense wiped out by injury and center David Krejci going back out of the lineup Sunday after a Game 5 knee-to-knee hit with Chris Wideman.

“Everybody should be proud of themselves,” goalie Tuukka Rask said. “We battled hard ever since the coaching change. We came together as a group. We played a heck of a series.”

Patrice Bergeron, as mature as any player in hockey, as clutch and reliable a playoff performer there is, was asked point blank. Do you want Cassidy back?

“Yeah, I thought he was great,” said Bergeron, who tied the game at 2 with a third period goal. “I think it showed with the way we responded and the way we’ve played. It’s tough right now to assess everything that’s been happening.

“But to be honest, I have nothing bad to say about him. I thought he was great. He definitely deserves to be back.”

Of course, the decision isn’t up to Cassidy or Bergeron or Rask or Zdeno Chara. Don Sweeney and Cam Neely will make that call and you never know for sure in the hours after a season-ending defeat.

What you do know for sure is playoff hockey is cruel and unforgiving. What you do know is playoff hockey is blood and beards and the heartache of one-goal defeats and the glory of overtime winners. Every game in the series was decided by one goal. Four went into overtime, three lost by the Bruins. Two were lost on power-play goals.

“It was apparent to everybody we weren’t at full strength,” Cassidy said. “Guys stepped up. I’m proud of the guys’ effort from Feb. 9 on. I think we played well enough to advance, but they made a few more plays than us. Every game could have gone either way.”

On defense alone, the Bruins were without Torey Krug, Brandon Carlo and Adam McQuaid. Still, they took control in the third period to tie the game when Bergeron rammed in the rebound of Brad Marchand’s shot. Ottawa was on its heels. The intermission before overtime clearly helped the Senators. Boucher had a message for his team in the locker room.

“We didn’t work all year just to sit back and hope things turn our way,” Boucher said.

He told them not to be scared to lose.

They weren’t. And now the Senators play the Rangers in the next series.

I’ve seen lots of hat tricks in my decades covering hockey, saw my share of Gordie Howe hat tricks (goal, assist, fight in one game), too. I’d never seen the natural hat trick — or was it unnatural? — the Bruins pulled off in the first period. They took three successive delay of game penalties for putting the puck over the glass.

Cassidy obviously didn’t say this in his pregame speech, “OK, boys, we’re going to take three delays in the row, put some souvenir pucks in the crowd, we’ll tire out their good players on the power lay and go up, 1-0.” But wouldn’t you know it? The “Be a Dope, Rope a Dope” approach worked. Drew Stafford scored on the power play for the Bruins in the final two minutes of a weird first period.

At 3:26 of the second, Ryan tied the game on the power play. Derick Brassard, who’ll have his chance to go against his former Rangers teammates, one-timed a shot off Ryan’s shin pad.

What Stafford gave late in the first period, he took away at 8:32 of the middle period. For some reason, Stafford chose not to clear the along the boards. Instead, he whirled around and tried to make a play. The puck was stolen by Ryan Dzingel near the blue line. Kyle Turris snapped a shot from the deep slot that beat Rask on the stick side to put Ottawa ahead, 2-1.

The Bruins made some bad decisions in the second period. They played meek at times. They needed to tilt the ice in the third, carry play with desperation befitting their quandary. They did. They outshot Ottawa 12-3 in the third.

“We got that goal to tie it, we had them on their heels and just couldn’t get another one,” Cassidy said. “The break clearly helped them.

“Our lack of not having some of the players we had during the year did catch up to us. Carlo and McQuaid are big-time penalty-killers for us. There are a couple of games they got to us on the PK, including today. They excel in that aspect. And we missed Torey Krug’s puck moving ability in games we had trouble creating offense.”

The Bruins have experienced parts. They also have entry-level parts. Neophytes, Cassidy called them, as far as NHL playoff experience goes and in a few cases any NHL experience. That’s why there’s optimism for the future. That’s why the Bruins felt OK even in defeat. The team got back on the right path the last two months of the season.

“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” Cassidy said to a reporter who asked if the style of play shown under him would continue. “It will be determined going forward by management whether I continue to be head coach and what players will be here.”

This much is sure. Cassidy wants the job.

And there really isn’t a reason not to give it to him.

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