The threshold for what constitutes an infraction should be consistent and applied evenly from team to team and player to player but it clearly isn’t because for the NHL parity is paramount.
Would you agree that the overwhelming majority of infractions occur in the defensive side of the ice, usually in an attempt to prevent scoring chances?
If so, then wouldn’t it make sense that a team like the Oilers that are at or near the top in basically every offensive category, who possess the puck as much as they do and create scoring chances at the rate they do, would draw more penalties and not be near the bottom of league for calls drawn.
Would you say it would be reasonable to expect that a team that has the puck often and generates a lot of scoring chances would likely be infracted against more often then the average?
Also because referees do actually just miss calls sometimes.
No penalty for instigating the fight? Or refs saw Kane and automatically assumed both players wanted to fight? No additional powerplay should have been called for the blues.
I don't disagree that oilers are undisciplined at times, but I believe that blues game was one sided. Even the American network agrued the successful challenge on the nuge goal should have counted.
It wasn't an instigator penalty. It was for taking the helmet off. That's a pretty cut and dry penalty.
I'm not saying there weren't issues last night. There absolutely were. But I don't think pointing out the penalty differential is the answer when the penalties we had were pretty obvious, aside from maybe the Hyman one. The goal reviews were b.s. though. I don't like the high stick rule the way it is now. The Kane goal should be okay in my opinion, but it isn't according to the rulebook so there's no arguing that one. But I think the Blues reviewed goal and the Nuge disallowed goal were incredibly similar, both goalies had a slight brush of interference, one was called back, the other wasn't. That wasn't fair, in my opinion.
My biggest issue with last nights games were 1) the reviews, and 2) ice that looked worse than our small town rinks have for community leagues. No team in the NHL should have ice that awful, and there needs to be some tighter standards - or the Blues need to be held to the standard .
The talk here is borderline nuts. The league doesn't have it out for the Oilers. I remember having a discussion with Darryl Sutter and him saying that the Canadian teams love Bettman and that he was the main reason we survived in the dark times.
The rest of this is drivel.
I'm pretty sure most of the teams love Bettman. He does what the NHL Board of Governors tells him to, and the teams make up the board. He's following orders like the rest of us shmucks do daily. He just gets them from the presidents of each NHL team.
