Thrilling first round, culminating with two Game 7s decided in OT on the same night. Hope the rest of the playoffs are like this. I've been rooting for Calgary and Edmonton to meet in a playoff series for a couple years now, should be a slugfest. The Tkachuk-Kassian rivalry should reach new heights, hope this series goes 7.
OT: 2021-22 NHL Regular Season Thread
- Thread starter Ronnie_B
- Start date
I know what you're saying shout penalties in OT, but the Pitt player wrapped his stick around Miller's waist and reached for left hip with his other hand; rely no way to not call it.
If the Pens want to complain about the ref's, it should not be for the OT call in Game 7. The non call on the crosscheck in Game 6, that led to Rodrigues loses his composer, and getting a retaliatory penalty, was the turning point.
The Pens don't need extra reasons to complain about officials; it's in their DNA.
Sullivan was bitching about the non call after the Pens player had his helmet ripped off. Okay, fair(ish), but the player stayed to petition for a call. If you want to blame confusion for Mika's tying goal, maybe your player needs to stop wasting time trying to do the refs' jobs for them.
To be fair, I complained (A LOT) about the overturned goal in Game 1, but felt that Dumoulin's contribution to Kakko's path contributed to the contact. That wasn't a tough call at real speed and they had the benefit of replay, and still missed that contact.
Where I still complain about the officials is their inability, and almost disinterest at times, to get out of the way of the players and pucks on the ice. This transcends team Fandom, it is a big problem when they are creating turnovers at the blue line. Players anticipating entry/exit are either put offsides or put themselves out of position anticipating a breakout. In one of the west conference games, a defender went behind the net followed by a forecheck; who shows up in that space between the boards and the net? The friggin' ref. Only three people on the ice below the dots, and that moron headed to the only choke point. WHY????
Couple thoughts... 1) The OT penalty was clear. Miller was on a semi-break and was clearly impeded. 2) Pens whining is annoying. I still contend their 2nd goal was a high stock, but for the coach and Crosby to blame their loss on the helmet thin in the third is a joke. They deserve to lose with that attitude.
The best part about their whining about the helmet is that they don’t even know the rule. The player is allowed to pick up his helmet and put it back on instead of going to the bench.
Yes it is a fast game, but there are too many screw ups when you have off ice officials seeing everything in real time.
I wrote that because it was the play, and the immediate aftermath, that was the mistake. You are right, that even in OT, has to be called. The crying Pens and their fans should discern the difference.
Just like they are rightfully able to go back and check missed highsticking calls, they should have the ability to correct a missed call, that led to retaliation. That said, Rodrigues should have taken a number, and not gone after him immediately. In every sport they always get the second guy. He is the goat, along with Louie's glove in my mind. This is something that happens to every team over time. To better the game, even if only in the playoffs, allow the ref's to see, and correct a mistake.
One thing is for certain, standing still complaining about not getting the call will never benefit the team in that moment.
Nor is using it as an excuse. They had a 3-1 series lead, led in all of the games, were tied in the 3rd last night (after the Mika goal) and lost in Overtime. Pointing to that play as the difference is pathetic, is a losers mentality and something I would yell at my kids for doing. Oh, and it ignores the fact they were 5-5 on goal reviews and had more PPs in the series.
Excellent concise recap. Pens are, as always, whiny in defeat in a series they had no business losing.
With BOS/WAS/PIT all going down, it kind of feels a bit like a changing of the guard in the East. Over the past 15 years, those teams have won a ton of games, all have won cups and have multiple HOFs. But they are all 35+. It will be interesting to see, if they do start to decline, how fast and who starts to replace them in the pecking order. Most of the locals have a shot here. I think we will be seeing a lot of NYR-NJD playoff battles very soon. NYI had a blip down this year, but they can be right there too. PHI needs to go full rebuild. I don’t think we will see them for a few years.
I assure you the officials are definitely very interested in getting out of the way. No official wants to be the reason the puck changes possession and potentially lead to a scoring chance, and nobody wants to get hit by the puck or a player, especially since they aren't nearly as heavily-padded as the players are. No official gets to the NHL or stays there by being indifferent about getting in the way of the flow the game.
Things happen too fast to react to a lot of the times, and they often have to make a calculated guess as to where the puck and players are going. It's hard to get a feel of how fast everything happens when you're watching on TV, or even in the stands if you're not at ice level. If you have a chance to sit along the glass you can really appreciate just how lightning fast everything is moving down there.
I don't know offhand the play you're talking about behind the net, but there must have been some reason for the ref going there. Based just on what you wrote, it sounds like he might have been expecting the play to end up in the corner and didn't want to get stuck in the middle of it, or was trying to avoid blocking the puck being wrapped up the boards or something. These guys are highly trained and experienced in on-ice official positioning, they don't just roam around wherever they please.
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Agree on some. And the answer isn't to come off the wall either. At that point you are much more likely to interfere with a player, not the puck. I don't believe they are INTENTIONALLY getting in the way; just too often end that way.
It'll never go back, but wonder if 2 referees and 1 linesman would work better. They would need to work out the offsides, but the automatic icing can certainly be handled by 1 guy. It's strange, but really think the one extra official is too crowded as the game just gets faster.
BUT, there are no words for the example I cited from the Western Conference. Literally, my mouth fell open.
They do get in the way more often than anyone would like, but I'm just saying it's not because they are disinterested in moving out of the way. Four officials on the ice definitely crowds things up, but I'm not sure what the solution is. An international-sized rink would help but that's never going to happen.
You need two linesmen, you can't have that one guy skating the entire length of the ice. Also icing requires two people--the guy trailing the play initiates it and then the guy chasing it down either waves it off or makes the call. I believe there are some levels that have two refs and one linesman, and one ref also acts as a linesman depending on what zone the puck is in, and I believe this is what happens in the NHL when a linesman gets injured and has to leave the game. It isn't perfect though because it adds more things for each referee to watch out for. Personally, I think people who advocate for fewer officials on the ice don't have a leg to stand on when they complain about missed calls. Maybe someday technology can replace much of the linesmen duties.
I'd be okay with officials pulling double duty on icing and offsides. Ideally with automatic icing the lineman could initiate and the lead ref would have to make the call. He wouldn't need to go end to end as most times they call it somewhere between blue line and the circle.
As for them being on the way, I often overstate my case. But it is frustrating at times.
Yeah that is about as feasible as it gets, but I'm still not crazy about having fewer eyes on the ice, increasing the likelihood of something going undetected. If this is combined with letting the officials do a quick replay review in the scorer's box (no phone calls etc) for anything they feel they need another look at in order to get the call right, then I like the idea.
To clarify, when I mentioned one linesman skating the full length of the ice, I didn't mean on a particular icing call, I meant in general the territory he would have to skate would be the full length as opposed to with two linesmen, you only go from one corner to just outside the far blue line. Having the far ref act as a linesman when needed could alleviate this as we seem to agree though, although it introduces its own challenges.
One other issue with two refs and one linesman is when scrums occur, do you only have the one linesman try to break things up, or does one of the refs jump in leaving only the other ref to keep an eye out for penalties? Another problem that is easily sorted by a quick look at a replay.
Refs getting in the way certainly is frustrating though, I'm sure most other Devils fans remember the linesman guessing wrong as to which way Anton Volchenkov was about to go in Game 6 against the Kings, inadvertently setting a perfect pick and leading to a goal. I've also been on both sides of this as a player and ref. It's aggravating when your pass up the boards gets picked off by a ref's leg, and it's no fun when you're the ref and you're the reason the play changes direction, not to mention the ensuing welt/bruise/etc. I took a dump-in right to the ear one time. A guy was coming up the boards in the neutral zone, had a teammate wide open he could have sprung for a breakaway, so I anticipated that and got in position to make sure the pass wasn't offside, and instead he opted to dump it up the glass and I just couldn't duck fast enough.
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Steve Cangialosi stepping down from the Devils booth. Good bye, thanks for leaving.
I am one Devils fan who will never be so charitable as to say, the Volchenkov screw up was a mistake. I'm a tough mark, that screw up IMO, should have led to a firing!
I am one Devils fan who will never be so charitable as to say, the Volchenkov screw up was a mistake. I'm a tough mark, that screw up IMO, should have led to a firing!
Dang I didn't like Cangialosi at first but I thought he really got a lot better. After listening to many other local broadcasts around the league, I think he was actually pretty good.
The only people who don't think the Volchenkov collision was a mistake are people who have never once worn the stripes themselves. There is no way any official would intentionally collide with a player in any NHL game, let alone a Stanley Cup Finals game. He suffered a pretty bad injury on that play too and had to leave the game. To think someone would do that intentionally is just ridiculous. I know we've gone over this before but the refs don't care who wins and aren't out there trying to sway the outcome of the game. From a ref's perspective, you want as little to do with the outcome as possible and you want it all decided by the players. You want nobody to remember your name.
Now even if this linesman did have some nefarious motive, let's think about it for a minute--he could be much more subtle about it by simply making bad calls, and even if he was willing to resort to such drastic measures to risk being injured and/or fired by letting himself get absolutely trucked, is it really worth doing that just to allow a zone entry for a team that is already up 3-0? Let's use some common sense here. There are much safer and more effective ways to impact a game than by letting yourself get steamrolled by a hard-hitting defenseman skating full speed in your direction just to allow a team to go on offense.
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No need to revisit this, I did not know the guy was injured, I hope he made a quick recovery. As I said, I am a very tough mark and that boneheaded mistake should not have happened in my mind. I am not commenting on any possible motivation there, just saying the linesman in question, should have used better judgement. It is because of his lack of judgement, I think he should have been fired, or given an off-ice job. Also because of the risk of injury to him and any player who ran into him!
I appreciate your knowledge and desire to defend fellow refs. Sometimes it is better to let stuff go, and not read too deeply in a thread meant to be fun.
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Just figured I can provide a perspective from the refs' point of view since most people have never been in that position. It certainly should not have happened and I was very pissed that it did, just pointing out that it was in fact an error and not done intentionally. I know I'm always defending refs on here, but that's really just to debunk accusations that there is some sort of conspiracy to help one team over another. I don't want to sound like everything they do is correct though, that game had some really bad officiating from the beginning that the Devils weren't able to overcome.
You would be correct. They almost survived, but no. Let’s hope they find a way in OT.
You could see the loss coming a mile away when they missed all of those chances to make it 2-0.
Chalk it up to that's hockey! Lingren has to be sick, Shesterkin deserved a better fate. When something like this happens, it always seems to happen this way, a nothing shot by a non goalscorer gets tipped in by a defenseman, who was in the right place, where generally the nothing shot hits him and deflects away. Goalie had no chance.
Doubt we will catch the Hurricanes sleepwalking for two periods again.
Is it possible Kreider, Mika and Panarin do any less?
Did Kreids play?
Different series zap. I get where you’re coming from, but this one is gonna be very different than Pittsburgh.
Ha I came here to say basically the same thing. It was 5-1 Calgary 6:10 into the 2nd, now they're only up 6-5 going into the 3rd. At one point they were outshooting Edmonton 31-8, but I guess you're never really out of it when you have a guy like McDavid on your team.
If you like old-time hockey, or LOVE "Slap Shot", like I do, you have to have a smile on your face seeing how it ended! Should be a great series, I hope it goes 7.
I had the impression watching the game that Gallant was giving the kid line a lot of additional ice time, because they were so noticeable in being the one line driving offense.
In reality, Gallant still gave the ineffective top six 3-5 more minutes and the 4th line got almost as much ice time as the kid line did.
I now understand why Gallant’s two firings, which seemed so inexplicable at the time, happened. He was criticized for being too attached to playing certain players and we see on the Rangers that there is nothing certain players can do to get their ice time cut within a game in favor of other guys playing better.
Lightning now up 2-0 on the President's Cup winners. I'm gonna channel my inner Yogi here. Nobody is beating the Lightning until somebody beats the Lightning.
It sure seemed that way. I had same reaction when looked at the numbers the next day.
I get that you need your best players to be your best players, but when they're invisible all night (and for basically 6/8 games) it's worth changing things up a bit.
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