Kuklas Korner: pointing at the refs

Kuklas Korner:


- “You know the type of game you’re going to get – we talked about it – it’s Marc Joannette and Warren, who I’ve had my issues with over the years.

And Darren Pang, today on XM, basically agreed with him. And to a degree, so do I. Joannette’s one of the guys that I’d originally put on my “least favorite” list and pulled because I just didn’t feel comfortable doing it from memory with my lack of detailed notes on him. But now that others are saying it too, I feel better about saying “me, too”.

where McTavish loses me, though, is that this is the refs fault. There are good refs and bad ones, and many in the middle. And all along the history of the game, different refs have brought a style and/or personality to games they called: nobody in their right mind would expect a game by Fraser to be called the same way Paul Stewart used to. One reason I really like Walkom as the new head of officiating is that the type of game he called — strong control, quiet personality, stable and consistent — is the type of game the NHL has to be getting everyone to stretch for.

It’s McTavish’s job, and the players responsibilty, to understand how the referees are going to impact the game, and adjust their game strategy accordingly. The good teams do this as a matter of course, and yes, I am saying they scout referees the way they do the opposition. And in reality, McTavish knew what his team was looking at, prepped his team for it, and they didn’t do what he told them to do.

Coming out on the refs in public is really just a way to try to swing a call your way in a later game. it’s politics. and it might well work. I got no problem there, by the way…

Here is, for what it’s worth, part of an email I sent last night about the officiating this year. It sums up my feelings pretty well:


I’m loving the officiating now. Rob Shick and Pollock had a really tough game tonight in San Jose, and he and his partner did a great job in my mind. Sillinger was ready to pop most of the night, and they kept the game from going sideways all evening. It wasn’t an easy night. If you check the tape, early in the first, you’ll see that there’s a sequence and after the whistle, the Preds start yapping at Pollock and giving him grief, and it was clear from our seats that Pollock got a bit stressed, but kept his cool — and Shick noticed it, and held up the faceoff and went over and talked to him for a short bit and got him calmed down and focussed again. A real quiet but veteran move, and it really impressed me. He was talking to everyone tonight (both were, actually), and working to keep tempers down, and the couple of times I thought the game was going to spin nasty, he cut it short with a good but timely penalty. And Sillinger more than deserved the 10 at the end…

So for what it’s worth — I’m really loving the new standards. The more I hear the dinosaurs whine about them (of course Derian Hatcher hates it; he can’t skate, he can’t keep up, he’s obsolete in the new NHL. and that’s great), the more I like seeing the league’s stance. Keep at it. Who would you rather see decide a game? Paul Kariya or Derian Hatcher, anyway? To me, the answer’s simple…

and yeah, I know Sillinger bitched at the press about the roughing call after the hit by McClaren — but it was correct, because it wasn’t a “shove back”, it was a punch to the face. If he’d shoved back, no call. But the tempers were escalating, the hit was legal (not late, but close….), and the response was an angry escalation. And Schick sat them for two, and kept the tempers from escalating any further. It was a key point of the game where it could have spun into chaos (or worse, a Flyers game) — and Schick caught just the right moments to get involved a LITTLE, to prevent it. that’s the kind of reffing I really like — where the refs stay out of it TO A POINT — but catch it before their job becomes aiming firehoses on the cinders and calling the next of kin.

In some way, you can best tell the good refs from the bad refs by how often games they ref spin out into rugby games. The better refs let them play, but not let them take over. The bad refs either clamp down too soon and piss players off, or don’t clamp down soon enough, and spend the rest of the night getting dirty looks from the linesmen, who, of course, are paid to clean up the messes…

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