The Standard of Confusion
I’ve not said anything in the debate about how penalties are being called this season. Generally I think enough people are already whining about it, and I’ve got little to add anyway. My opinion is that the refs often take an undeserved amount of crap from people as they work to find a balance between limiting obstruction, while still keeping the game moving. Mistakes are made, but that’s to be expected.
But last night’s Canucks/Wild game defied any explanation other than bad, bad officiating. So many problems, I don’t even know where to start. Fortunately, The Province’s Ed Willes pretty much nails it with his column today.
Here’s a portion:
The game lurched from whistle to whistle without cohesion or rhythm. Eighty per cent of the offence was produced on the power play. Players struggled to locate where the line was between fair and foul. […]
On a call that defied reason, [Jan Bulis] took a roughing minor during a battle for the puck with the Wild’s Todd White in the second period.
Eighty-six seconds later Kevin Bieksa was sent off for attempting to hold a member of the Wild during a post-whistle scrum.
The resulting five-on-three, we remind you, was in a tie game late in the second period.
“Oh my gawd,” said Bulis. “What the hell was that. I’ve never seen a call like that. It was a one-on-one battle. I’ve got both my hands on my stick. I didn’t hit him. I just kind of leaned into him.”
But this isn’t about one fluffed call or a misjudgment or even the video replay, which the Wild had a legitimate beef about. This is about the standard. This is about the game the NHL is trying to create.
And there are just too many games players, fans and the media, like Bulis, are wondering what the hell was that.






China-based reader GZ Expat had a great surprise on his blog the other day — he had photographed the 
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