IT IS all about fealty to the offi ciating program instituted by Stephen Walkom and Gary Bettman, one that just about everyone without a vested interested in supporting Sixth Avenue recognizes as broken.
The NHL no longer is about referees who call games by feel and on instinct and who recognize that an elastic clause must be part of any rulebook, even if written in invisible ink.
Instead, it’s about referees who color by number, who are working not to please the participants but rather their supervisor who deducts points for every incident in which some player raises his stick parallel to an opponent’s and is not whistled for a penalty.
Missing significant and blatant penalties? That apparently doesn’t count for as much in this administration.
How else to explain the fact that Marc Joannette and Brad Watson, the two refs who missed the high stick on which Ryan Malone sliced open Chris Drury’s face in the second period of Game 5 of the Rangers-Pittsburgh series, are both working the Detroit-Pittsburgh Cup Finals?
How else to explain that Paul Devorski, part of the crew that allowed the Flyers to score into an open net in Game 7 against Washington by ignoring a glaring goaltender interference penalty on Patrick Thoresen, is also one of the referees assigned to the Finals?
How else to explain that Kerry Fraser, perhaps the last independent man standing, could not make it out of the first round this season after somehow being barred from the playoffs a year ago after three decades on the job?
We’re not suggesting that one mistake be cause for demotion or dismissal. If that were the case, this space would be blank. To err is to be Slap Shots, as they like to say at NHL headquarters and out at La Quinta. Still, the scope of the errors made in the 2008 playoffs has been manifest.
Even in acknowledging the job’s increasing degree of difficulty, few in the industry have confidence in the current officiating program. Somehow, it’s become all about the fine print, at the expense of the broad strokes. Too many dangerous and violent fouls are missed. The question isn’t so much, “What are they watching?” as, “What are they being told to watch?”
Moreover, the league office hasn’t helped matters in the slightest with its determination to institute after-the-fact rules and interpretations such as the Avery Amendment, or to manufacture out-of-thin-air explanations for incorrect calls.
The Rangers never received an official explanation for the penalty shot Kevin Pollock awarded to Evgeni Malkin in Game 4 of the Pittsburgh series when Dan Girardi pushed No. 71 from behind on a breakaway after some original malarkey out of Toronto about body position being the determining factor on such a call.
The Red Wings suddenly discovered that Tomas Holmstrom’s butt end had broken the plane of the air space that extends up from the crease when Kelly Sutherland disallowed a Detroit goal in Game 4 of the Dallas series. A new one for sure to explain away an erroneous call made by reputation.
There is no question the games are harder to call than ever. The speed of the game makes it so, and so do the new-age rules interpretations and innovations that grew out of the 2004 Shanahan Summit.
But the degree of difficulty has overwhelmed the structure. Referees often appear to be working at cross-purposes with their partners. One referee doesn’t seem to make the other better. And Walkom nit-picks the officials to distraction with a grading system that brokers no missed interference calls but ignores the most blatant and inexplicable oversights.
Bettman needs to ask Walkom why so many fouls to the head – high sticks that drew blood – were missed this season. How could eight eyes, including those of the linesmen, have missed Malone’s foul against Drury? Was it human error or systemic defect? Is it time for a radical redesign of the officiating structure? Questions must be asked in order for answers to be supplied.
This has been a pretty good year for the NHL. The waters seem relatively placid. Still, there’s that iceberg up ahead, and just about everyone can see it from a mile away. It’s got stripes on it.
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Seems the Rangers not only used the lockout to withhold 2005 and 2006 bonus payments due Bobby Holik and Jed Ortmeyer, but that management actually filed grievances to recover $2 million previously paid to Holik on July 1, 2004 and $50,000 paid to Ortmeyer on Sept. 15, 2004.
That was revealed in the arbitration decision rendered against the Rangers and in favor of Holik and Ortmeyer by Richard Bloch this week.
The 2008 Penguins are the equivalent of the 1983 Oilers only if that Edmonton team was poised to lose Jari Kurri (as Marian Hossa); Glenn Anderson (as Malone); Dave Lumley (as Jarkko Ruutu); Willy Lindstrom (as Pascal Dupuis); and Randy Gregg (as Brooks Orpik) to unrestricted free agency over the summer.