‘Game management’ at the root of NHL’s officiating issues

Bigmarycombo

Registered User
Jul 15, 2017
1,439
1,365
The nhl is the only league where the rule book is thrown out in the playoffs

I hate it when I hear the play by play commentator say the refs are letting them play. In other words the rules are out the window.

Just call penalties that should be called. It’s that simple. If it’s a penalty in the regular season or in the first minute of a game it’s a penalty in the last minute too. The players will eventually adapt.

The problem is they let so much go that fans get pissed because their player got hauled down and a scoring chance taken away with no penalty called in the meantime the other team takes the puck a way and scores.

Just call the game according to the rules. Don’t try to manage games that’s what comes back to bite them in the ass.
 

TheStroker

Registered User
Jun 13, 2012
1,767
236
USA
Its pretty obvious just watching the games, that game management is happening.

I think the NHL just needs to be consistent.

If its a penalty, call it. Who cares if its preseason, regular season, playoffs, late in the third, overtime etc. There will always be issues with reffing, but if they were consistent, I think it would improve and clean up the game immensely. We can sit here and blame individual refs, but I do think they are given directions from the league on how to ref, which is a major part of the problem.

It's never been about having bad refs. They are the best at their jobs in the world. IMO it's 100% direction from league management who still live with this old school mentality that games need to be close in order to be interesting, and let the players play in important games. That couldn't be further from the truth. For the league to actually change things would mean listening to fans, which would mean admitting they are wrong about how things are. Old people don't like to change things, and certainly don't like to admit they are wrong.

I think the league hears fans loud and clear. But actually acting upon it is a completely different story. Unfortunately as long as old school dinosaurs like Campbell, Bettmen et al. are still involved in managing the league, we'll never see changes made until a new guard comes in. How often do discussion about reffing and game management come up during the annual GM meetings? You'd think that would be at the forefront of discussion since fans and even players/coaches are very vocal about it, yet instead they talk about dumb changes no one cares about. To me that's very telling; the league has made it clear that discussing changes to how the game is officiated is completely off the table and don't even bring it up.

After the '05 lockout and recently with the temporary crackdown on slashing to the wrists, we saw the league mandate to the officials to be more on the lookout for infractions. Refs complied and infractions were caught. Then fans caught wind that the league thought it was too many penalties, so refs were told to not call them so much. How can you even make a statement like that? If an infraction occurs, it should be a penalty. Period, end of story. Yet refs were told to not call so many. So they have no choice but to manage calls, therefore managing the game itself.

It's an epidemic around the league. Every team goes through it. Every fan is frustrated with it.
 

Trinstin

Registered User
Oct 30, 2009
676
160
Denver, CO
This kind of makes the NHL pointless. Especially if the Sharks win this year, who cares? They sure as hell got a lot of help from officiating at this point and might not even deserve to still be playing right now.
 

Neuf

Leaving HFBoards for now
Dec 17, 2016
6,217
9,290
It's nuts. A penalty in regulation isn't one in ot; the team that just got 3 powerplay in a row are much more likely to get a weaker call; game to game different sensitivities for calls, etc. Nevermind playoffs is completely different.
 
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Buffdog

Registered User
Feb 13, 2019
5,798
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Honest question: has anyone here actually reffed a hockey game? You'd be surprised how fast things happen.

For what it's worth, "game management" is actually a topic that's taught in the officiating levels (at least here in Canada). You can't possibly call everything. Calls need to be made on plays where an impact to the game is clear... Ie causing a turnover, costing a scoring chance, or something blatantly obvious.

The saying I remember form my level 3 clinic regarding game management (calling everything vs "letting them play") is "calling a good hockey game is like holding a bird in your hands... Do it to tightly and you kill it, and if you do it too loosely it will get away in you". That said, consistency is the key for all refs on a game by game basis. What is a call in the first is a call in the third. If you let it go once, you have to let it go every time.

For everyone complaining about it... I suggest you grab a whistle and go try to do a game - even if it's men's league or kids. It will change your view on this.
 

Stephen

Moderator
Feb 28, 2002
77,848
51,514
Let's face it, referees are extremely political, and is rife for exploiting in the playoffs.

If I'm building a playoff strategy from scratch, I'll put a team on the ice that initiates borderline play and disruption in high volume. Get them early and bait them into retaliatory acts. Fact is, the officiating is not going to call 20 minor penalties a game however you cross the line. Furthermore, the game management means that if your team takes a lot of penalties, chances are they'll balance it out and start calling more penalties against the other team so as not to seem like their calls are torpoedoing your chances. ''

So long story short, if you know how to initiate the borderline stuff the payoff can be extremely high.
 
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Windy River

Registered User
Jan 31, 2013
1,635
665
The worst is when a weak call is made on one team. Its a mistake, but already been called - no biggy; time to learn, forget and move on. But the refs have other ideas. The other team, now matter how much they tip-toe around the ice, will get called on anything remotely resembling a penalty. It's coming sooner or later and everyone knows it. Meanwhile the team with the first penalty can get away with almost anything. And all the players know this, so it affects, to everyone's detriment, the gameplay itself during the intervening 5v5 play.
 

Ragamuffin Gunner

Lost in the Flood
Aug 15, 2008
34,551
6,735
Boston
What sucks is that you see teams like Boston exploiting this fact, knowing that they're gonna get about even penalties so they goon it up all series.
 

TurboLemon

Registered User
Mar 11, 2013
120
55
Honest question: has anyone here actually reffed a hockey game? You'd be surprised how fast things happen.

For what it's worth, "game management" is actually a topic that's taught in the officiating levels (at least here in Canada). You can't possibly call everything. Calls need to be made on plays where an impact to the game is clear... Ie causing a turnover, costing a scoring chance, or something blatantly obvious.

The saying I remember form my level 3 clinic regarding game management (calling everything vs "letting them play") is "calling a good hockey game is like holding a bird in your hands... Do it to tightly and you kill it, and if you do it too loosely it will get away in you". That said, consistency is the key for all refs on a game by game basis. What is a call in the first is a call in the third. If you let it go once, you have to let it go every time.

For everyone complaining about it... I suggest you grab a whistle and go try to do a game - even if it's men's league or kids. It will change your view on this.

So you're telling me that there's just as much game management in world cup and olympic hockey as there is in the NHL?
 
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txpd

Registered User
Jan 25, 2003
69,649
14,131
New Bern, NC
The nhl is the only league where the rule book is thrown out in the playoffs

Nah. NFL and NBA where penalties and fouls are also judgement calls also manage games. NBA does a lot of the same game style management that the NHL does. See how some NBA playoff series are rough and physical whiles others are called tight. Same as the NHL
 

kilowatt

the vibes are not immaculate
Jan 1, 2009
18,357
20,894
Its pretty obvious just watching the games, that game management is happening.

I think the NHL just needs to be consistent.

If its a penalty, call it. Who cares if its preseason, regular season, playoffs, late in the third, overtime etc. There will always be issues with reffing, but if they were consistent, I think it would improve and clean up the game immensely. We can sit here and blame individual refs, but I do think they are given directions from the league on how to ref, which is a major part of the problem.

I hate the “let them play” mentality late in games and during the playoffs. Obvious calls are let go, which leads every call to be considered a weak call. It’s a lose lose. Call the penalties.
 
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SnuggaRUDE

Registered User
Apr 5, 2013
8,946
6,480
I love playoff Baseball. The umpire stops calling balls and strikes by the 7th inning stretch and just “let’s them play”.

Could you imagine if they got involved? It’d be chaos.
 

TT1

Registered User
May 31, 2013
23,679
6,137
Montreal
Does research even need to be done on this? It goes without saying, anyone with common sense knows that this is how officiating is done in the NHL. There's even terms for this.. "even up calls" etc.
 

DapperCam

Registered User
Jul 9, 2006
5,834
3,183
I’ve seen teams use this to their advantage by balancing on the line of hooking, obstructing, setting picks etc. The refs can only call so many or the game would have a ridiculous number of power plays. This game management by the refs leads to an advantage for one team. Babcock used to do this sort of thing a lot.
 

613Leafer

Registered User
May 26, 2008
12,818
3,641
I pulled the data on penalties for/against each team for the last two years (regular season), which is another way of looking at the same issue.

Some teams are obviously less dirty, less physical, etc, while others are dirtier, more physical, etc. So we fully expect some teams to receive more penalties than others. However, the least penalized teams also tend to get the fewest power plays, whereas the most penalized teams tend to get the most power players, which we don't really expect.

Now there could be some legitimate reasons for this aside from "game management". Teams may adjust their behaviour depending on what type of team they're playing for example. But overall, I think it's more indicative of "game management", and refs not willing to simply call a penalty a penalty. Instead, if they give a penalty to Team X, they feel obligated to give a penalty to Team Y.

By trying to keep things relatively even, they change the standards for both teams. The really physical/dirty teams have to do something incredibly blatant to get further penalties, whereas the refs are looking for something to call against the other team.

I don't think there's really any legitimate reason for these numbers to be highly correlated, and it removes the incentive to try and play a cleaner game.



NHL Team Penalties.png
 

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