The Everything NHL Thread

[Vineon]

Seems like you don't know kelly Sutherland

19/20 games Kelly reffed for the Canucks, the Canucks were penalised more.

Perhaps you should put down the coolaid, these guys aren't accountable.

So what are you saying? Just say it clearly :

You're saying he's on payroll by the NHL to penalize the Canucks more?

I accept that a single referee (or a few) can be incompetent but I reject conspiracy theories that have the NHL favour one team using officiating. That is what is ridiculous.

 

[popemobile]

Seems like you don't know kelly Sutherland

are you joking me? never in my life have I seen a video as homer-y as this one. you should be ashamed for linking it

 

[popemobile]

can't wait for the nucks to be bottom feeders next year.

 

[CaptainKishimoto]

Torontonian reporting here: LOL the sadness. Everywhere.

Thank god I'm not a leaf fan.

Lies, you bandwagoned that shit so hard (I know I did).

 

[Mercy]

I shut the game off when it was 4-1 with about 13 mins to go. Boston looked dejected and I figured even the Maple Laughs couldn’t blow a lead that big. LOL I was wrong.

 

[Eraddd]

Less corruption, more incompetence, inability to cover all four corners of ice at once and swaying of home crowd to a small extent. Lot of teams got fucked by reffing in the first round.

Also bottom feeders really? What a fucking joke. Even with the change of divisions, the Canucks have maintained decent stats against other divisional teams. Data as of Feburary 2013 (can't be fucked to actually do math)

GP Wins Losses OTL Pts/82 GF/82 GA/82 GD/82
Against Northwest 48 36 9 3 128 265 164 101
Against Other Divisions 116 69 32 15 108 252 203 49


Fenwick Close% Close Sh% Close Sv% Close PDO
Against Northwest 54.3 7.94% 0.949 1.028
Against Rest of NHL 52.2 7.66% 0.929 1.005

Note that the Canucks had 52.6 Fenwick Close% against teams outside of the NW in 2011, arguably their most successful season. Sure they're not shoo-ins to win their respective conference title like in the Northwest but calling bottom feeder is a pretty huge joke.

 

[Wikey]

So what is it? You believe the refs get taken aside and receive instructions to favour a team over another?

Fairly sure no serious league would even take that chance considering the huge backlash it would create if it were ever known. It's just not worth it.

What backlash? Marc Joanette called 10 penalties this series and 9 were against the Caps and I see no backlash other than from a small but loud group of Caps fans. The NHL will never see any backlash because of this mentality of "quit whining".

I don't know what goes on behind the scenes but I know that both the league and the Refs benefit financially when series go seven games. What business on the planet do companies just let free money disappear in interest of fairness? Why is it so radical to think that officials favor home teams to artificially stretch a series and ensure more work for them? Why is it so radical to believe that the NHL would want a team from the country's biggest media market to advance over the tenth or so media market?

You say it isn't worth the risk but I say there is no risk because there is no backlash. Remember the scandal with NBA Refs? Do you think it hurt them financially? Nope. Two football teams had huge salary cap penalties doled out to them for breaking a rule that didn't, and legally couldn't, exist and that four other teams broke and faced no penalty for and that was decided on by a DIVISION RIVAL. Was there backlash? A little from fans of the teams that got whored. But they just get told to "quit whining" and the league loses no money and no sleep.

 

[Nysyr]

are you joking me? never in my life have I seen a video as homer-y as this one. you should be ashamed for linking it

And you are the reason they get away with it.

Go on, please, make my day.

 

[Justin8649]

You guys are missing the entire issue here. The refs aren't out to get any team. They are just inconsistent idiots. I'm so sick of how much the game changes from the beginning of the season to the playoffs. The game ends up turning into rugby on ice. It's literally impossible to play any sort of offense unless you have a couple of all-star lines. Dump and chase will NOT work in the playoffs because the refs allow defensemen to tackle any forward an hour after they dump the puck in. All you see in the playoffs is teams stacking the blue line to prevent skating it in and then if there is a dump, they can just get away with interference. Dump and chase is supposed to be the strategy to beat the blue line stacking..............so the entire game just turns into a big grindfest with interference all over the place. It's so boring and annoying. The Blues/Kings series was literally some of the worst hockey I've ever seen in my life.

This is how offense works in the playoffs due to interference being non-existent.

1) Team skates around in the neutral zone for a while and makes a stupid no-look pass to the other team for an odd-man rush

2) Team tries to skate it in at the blue line and turns it over for an odd-man rush

3) Team takes a terrible shot on the rush that goes all the way around the boards and gives the other team an odd-man rush

4) Team is on the powerplay and manages to skate it in. Defenseman fumbles the puck/falls down/shoots directly into a fully armored forward and gives up a breakaway.

Every year at the beginning of the season we see interference called on any defenseman that touches a forward once they've dumped the puck in. This is when we see the best flow in hockey. The other team can't stack up the blue line or they will get burned with dump and chase. This actually results in teams being able to skate it in the zone later on and have nice pretty passing plays. This is how hockey is supposed to be played.

Solution: If it was a penalty on the first game of the season, it's still a penalty in the playoffs.

 

[Golden Piloswine]

When he was a ref, I thought Stephen Walkom was pretty good...

Sometimes the refs do just want to keep the games close, but sometimes they just screw up.

 

[Vineon]

What backlash? Marc Joanette called 10 penalties this series and 9 were against the Caps and I see no backlash other than from a small but loud group of Caps fans. The NHL will never see any backlash because of this mentality of "quit whining".

I'm talking about those convinced the league purposely makes it so some series last longer... or favour some teams over some others with the help of officiating.

No referee is under mandate to do anything like that because if it were known (and it would eventually get known), the 'backlash' would be an incredible loss of credibility for the league.

I'm sure league management has it's favourites but it really cannot get it's referees to help them with the outcome. All it would take is one referee to decide he should tell the media and it would hurt the league tremendously. It's never happened.

What was the NBA ref scandal? This?

Tim Donaghy gambled on and attempted to fix NBA games while he was employed by the league as a referee.

It was one gambling crooked ref favouring a team for personal gain that never received instructions to do so by the league.

If Joanette called 9/10 on the Caps, it is for a reason (I want to say likely coincidence) that is not 'being asked by the league to favour the Rangers'.

 

[Synre]

I want to be mad about the Caps and the Leafs but I mean, really, is there a more appropriate way for them to lose? Caps get up 2-0 and then get blown out in Game 7, Leafs, way down in series, make improbable comeback and then choke it with a minute left... the Robot Devil approves.

I just don't think the Caps can win Game 7 with the way the games are called without some roster changes. They need interference to be a penalty and power plays to exist to function, even the first period before they started leaking goals they couldn't convert on anything because they were getting outmuscled near the crease and for loose pucks. I think that's where the --officiating-- really hurt them: Game 7 was called like I'd expect it to be, but the Rangers had a much better team for that situation. Caps needed to end the series sooner and didn't get much chance between the PP thing and Lundqvist dominating them. Think the Rangers have a good shot at going all the way, just a well constructed team for this time of year.

EDIT: Honestly, I think it's less a conspiracy as the refs not wanting to be the ones to eliminate teams and not calling anything that isn't huge against them, but the Rangers and Red Wings both taking 0 penalties in Game 6 is pretty silly. It's like they wind up changing the series by trying not to change the series.

 

[Eraddd]

I'm talking about those convinced the league purposely makes it so some series last longer... or favour some teams over some others with the help of officiating.

No referee is under mandate to do anything like that because if it were known (and it would eventually get known), the 'backlash' would be an incredible loss of credibility for the league.

I'm sure league management has it's favourites but it really cannot get it's referees to help them with the outcome. All it would take is one referee to decide he should tell the media and it would hurt the league tremendously. It's never happened.

I don't believe that the NHL places teams above each other and explicitly tells referees to play favorites. But it's fair to say that there's a good deal of lobbying on behalf of the teams to push for calls that benefit their team (See Stan Bowman's conversation with the referee supervisor during the 2011 Blackhawks-Canucks series). It's not so much the league who push for calls in my opinion but rather the teams, and the more weight the franchise and the team executive has, inevitably, some of the calls probably will become skewed.

An example of teams lobbying for calls is when Lucic ran over Miller; GMs were furious that Lucic was able to escape suspension for that, which led to a rash of calls protecting goaltenders, from the Chicago player getting suspended 3 games for "headshotting" Smith, to Edler getting suspended two games for his hit on Smith.

Also, using the NBA as an example, they do have league executives who give instructions to referees to watch for certain types of plays (whether it be restricting them or being lenient), and it's probably fair to say the NHL execs carry some of this power; while they probably don't do it to screw over teams, they may have a negative impact on a team's play inadvertently.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

Bartender: "What'll you have?"
Patron: "I'll have an Ovechkin!"
Bartender: "What's that?"
Patron: "It's a White Russian with no cup!"

Great. Caps shit the bed and now everyone gets to pretend the refs didn't completely job them. I fucking hate sports fans. Officiating will never get better as long as we have this stupid fucking "quit whining" mentality. What happened in this series was unacceptable. Officials helped an overmatched team stretch the series and by series end the better team was out of gas and shit the bed.

lol

What a typical DC response: "It can't be my fault! Blame someone else!" Blaming the refs is the lifeboat of the loser and it always will be.

An example of teams lobbying for calls is when Lucic ran over Miller; GMs were furious that Lucic was able to escape suspension for that, which led to a rash of calls protecting goaltenders, from the Chicago player getting suspended 3 games for "headshotting" Smith, to Edler getting suspended two games for his hit on Smith.

Also, using the NBA as an example, they do have league executives who give instructions to referees to watch for certain types of plays (whether it be restricting them or being lenient), and it's probably fair to say the NHL execs carry some of this power; while they probably don't do it to screw over teams, they may have a negative impact on a team's play inadvertently.

This is spot on. It's a pendulum, the refs are literally told to look for certain plays and behaviors and given footage of players doing those things. It's just a statistical fact that these swings will effect some teams over others. If the rule that justin#### mentioned that turns hockey into the NBA where offensive players have free reign crossing into the zone were taken seriously by people who actually play hockey, teams like the Bruins and Rangers would both be hurt by that. It's not one person's fault, it's the evolution of the game.

Also bottom feeders really? What a fucking joke. Even with the change of divisions, the Canucks have maintained decent stats against other divisional teams. .

They can be seen as bottom feeders because of what BlueCookies and I mentioned: teams that need the power play don't do well in games that matter. Refs don't call penalties in big games, as most of you are whining about today (PLEASE REFS JUST LET THEM PLAY). All of the Canucks wins have come with very little at stake. Stats from a January game against a divisional opponent don't have the same impact as watching them fall flat in their playoff runs. I guess this is fine if you like the Presidents' Trophy and the Stanley Cup is priority #2. I don't think thats what he meant but the bottom feeder label is definitely appropriate for the Canucks.

I shut the game off when it was 4-1 with about 13 mins to go. Boston looked dejected and I figured even the Maple Laughs couldn’t blow a lead that big. LOL I was wrong.

Luckily you shut the game off. I wouldn't want to see you miss sleep and be late for the bandwagon tomorrow morning.

the Rangers and Red Wings both taking 0 penalties in Game 6 is pretty silly. It's like they wind up changing the series by trying not to change the series.

Game 7 with Boston vs Tampa Bay in 2011 is seen as one of the best-officiated games in recent sports history, and there were no penalties called. Those were two extremely physical teams on both sides of the ice. We can have great games without the calls. It can be done!

I agree with you guys that the inconsistency sucks, but I would rather see a no-call than a bad call any day of the week. No-calls encourage players to play harder, which is better for me as a fan. Bad calls encourage teams to play like the diving teams that nobody likes to watch. Can you people please stop trying to turn hockey into soccer and basketball?

 

[Aldaron]

Uhhh, not sure why this issue is even about no call vs. bad call?

We want consistent calls...A no call in the playoffs after a season of calls is literally the definition of a bad call...you are changing the game, entirely arbitrarily. Never calling interference literally changes the entire dynamic of a game and a team's style. When you don't make interference calls you are literally giving an advantage to teams that like to slow down the pace (especially those that employ pseudo traps, as defensive teams in the playoffs tend to do) and telling fast skating teams to shove a dick down their throats.

That said, blaming refs is like blaming your teacher for a bad grade; sure, they influence the game but in the end, it's on you to play your best day in and day out. Blaming the ref is blaming a minimal percentage of influence while ignoring the fact that the majority percentage influence is entirely on yourself.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

One other thing I wanted to say since I haven't posted here in a while, I disagree with the people saying penalties should be called the same in game 1 of the season and game 7 of the finals. Athletes are an investment and you have to protect them over a long grueling hockey season. As much as you numerical-purity-demanding, reality-ignoring amateur statisticians want to make this statement, the regular season is not the playoffs and the games do not have the same weight for the players, fans, league, owners and refs.

Uhhh, not sure why this issue is even about no call vs. bad call?

We want consistent calls...

When you don't make interference calls you are literally giving an advantage to teams that like to slow down the pace (especially those that employ pseudo traps, as defensive teams in the playoffs tend to do) and telling fast skating teams to shove a dick down their throats.

At least with no calls, you get consistency :)

If we had an interferometer that could detect exactly how much interference occured, I would agree with you. But it will always be subjective, so inconsistency is mandatory. Even if the refs had an exact definition of interference, it STILL depends on their viewing angles and position on the ice. I'd rather see it err on the side of letting the players play. It's no coincidence that this favors strong defensive trap teams, since that is what happens in any physical contest over time. For people who want more interference called: exactly how much contact should be allowed before a power play is given? Show me the line. Sorry if this was off track, I mentioned bad calls vs no calls because the discussion was on how one team getting fewer penalty calls proves that there is a refereeing conspiracy in the NHL.

 

[Vineon]

but the Rangers and Red Wings both taking 0 penalties in Game 6 is pretty silly. It's like they wind up changing the series by trying not to change the series.

I remember the only time I had ever seen a complete game with no penalty minutes for either team. Game 7, conference finals between the Bruins and Lightning. Everybody knew the Bruins were better at 5v5 while TB thrived on the PP. Bruins won and ended up winning the Cup. Yeah, it was fishy.

I hadnt seen it happen before and I haven't since.

edit : Apparently, jrrrrr just mentionned that game as well and calls it one of the best officiated game ever.

 

[popemobile]

And you are the reason they get away with it.

Go on, please, make my day.

hmmm, it seems the nucks still got swept and the hawks are in the second round

day made

 

[popemobile]

Also bottom feeders really? What a fucking joke. Even with the change of divisions, the Canucks have maintained decent stats against other divisional teams.

Nucks are pressed against the cap, need to trade a goalie for basically no return, have a weak prospect pool, their two biggest stars have been steadily getting worse, and your stats about the nucks against other divisions vs. the northwest shows that they are significantly worse against other divisions (a whole .160 worse winning percentage).

Looks pretty grim to me

 

[Aldaron]

please keep pushing eraddd it is not as precious as wikey but slowly getting there

 

[DM]

So what are you saying? Just say it clearly :

You're saying he's on payroll by the NHL to penalize the Canucks more?

I accept that a single referee (or a few) can be incompetent but I reject conspiracy theories that have the NHL favour one team using officiating. That is what is ridiculous.

Tim Donaghy called, he has some stuff to tell you about conspiracy theories

Solution: If it was a penalty on the first game of the season, it's still a penalty in the playoffs.

This post killed it, 100%.






ANYWAY, let's talk about how fucking awesome this round's matchups are going to be. Detroit-Chicago? I mean, FUCK YEAH. Old-timey original 6 division rivals, love it. LA-San Jose? An aging California team looking to make its last stand against a young, dominant California team. Too bad I'll only get to watch 1.4 seconds of this series, living on the east coast. Boston-NYR is another great old-timey series of original 6 teams. Lots of grit and defense in this series, scoring over/under on each game is probably around 0.6. And Pitt-Ottawa... not a lot of historical significance, but definitely some recent bad blood. Ottawa is going to take it to them physically, but penalty trouble will sink them if they continue to go shorthanded against that dream team.

 

[Justin8649]

I guess I'm on the Sharks bandwagon since the Senators have absolutely no chance to make it past this round.

 

[WaterBomb]

I should really be a better Pittsburgh fan and watch them more often, not just when they're doing well XD. I'm still kind of peeved with them about how carelessly they've handled the career of a rare talent like Crosby, who could have had an amazing AND longer career had he been given more time to recover from his concussions.

 

[DM]

At this point, I guess I'm rooting for the Sharks out of the West and the Rangers out of the East. Both are dark horses. Finally, Cup to the Rangers, because Marty Biron is still my boy.

 

[Vineon]

Tim Donaghy called, he has some stuff to tell you about conspiracy theories

None of this "stuff" has anything to do with a direct involvement by the league. The guy was a gambler and rigged games to make a few bucks.