Only losers blame losses on referees. Winners find a way to win. If anyone thinks a referee respected enough to be selected for an internationally televised tournament would throw away his reputation by being obviously biased, well, you need to get out more.
The purpose of neutral officials is partly to reduce the likelihood of influence and partly to lessen the disparity that comes when one country’s style is favoured over the other’s. Both of those factors are anachronistic now. Hockey is played and officiated more or less the same everywhere under IIHF rules now. Referees do what they’re told by tournament supervisors - if they don’t, they stop getting games. So the fact that this game has one or two Czech referees means nothing.
Specifically, the penalty called in OT was legit. The trip that Button was whining about was not worth calling in OT. The puck changed hands, sure, but in an inconsequential place. The trip that led to a penalty would have led to an odd-man rush and a very good scoring opportunity. That was the difference.
I thought the Czechs got away with too many hooks. I disagreed with how they called the post-play scrums. But those are usually a result of how supervisors instruct referees. No referee goes into a game expecting to call everything. They tend to focus on the things the bosses emphasize. Inexperienced refs (relatively speaking) will often miss things that they’re not looking for - if they’re only focused on their emphasized fouls. That will usually benefit one team over the other if one team doesn’t play that way. For example, if a team tries to use sticks to tie up their opponents and that’s what the refs are keying on, that team is going to the box and pay the price against, say, a team that is more interested in pushing the envelope physically.
I saw a lot, in what I saw on YouTube, of referees calling some types of fouls - a lot of tripping for some reason - and missing/ignoring other types. I think it was substandard. But good teams adapt. Canada needed to be smarter, and in those times when they weren’t, they had to play through it.
And fans who think any referee gives a rat’s ass who wins an U-18 hockey game in August, you need to get your tin foil hat resized.