I didn't see it, but knowing him and Sid...it was the "It's all Connor's fault" show. "Dont turn your back the last second" "Lindholm commited to the hit when McDavid turned, not his fault".
If it was Marner, marble mouth or Nostrils, they'd have been screaming for the death penalty.
Watch the narrative turn to how the Oilers need to protect McDavid ... that can’t happen anymore ... how many games will someone get for attacking Lindholn... we already seen Lucic get 2 games for going after someone in FLA and pinning him down .... we know if some went crazy the oilers would of had a 5 minute PK and could of lost a game they really needed ... it’s not like the old days ... league needs to protect its players ... this team got laughed at when they tried that **** in the cgy and lost
That show is so annoying
Just complete incompetence from this ref. Staring at the play right in front of him can't get any more obvious to call it.
Hitch probably made it worse when he called out the refs.
Here's my take on this:
Yes, it clearly should have been a penalty. Maybe a 5-minute penalty, as per League standards for dangerous-area hits. No suspension. I would guess that 90% of the time, after a moderate hit like that, Connor probably doesn't even fall down. But because he was moving fast at that moment and going off-balance, it looks worse than it actually was. (NOTE: I said it should have been a penalty. Re-read the above before flaming.)
Some of you need to remember that the game, which is played at a ridiculously high speed, is officiated by two very human beings who WILL INEVITABLY AND WITHOUT FAIL miss some stuff. This is a fact of life, which, as a hockey fan, you have to accept. The ref might at that exact moment have been thinking about another play that had just occurred, or perhaps even focusing on another spot near him on the ice.
As Gord Miller wrote, the refs ARE held accountable. I would guess that, due to the negative PR this incident is generating, that particular referee (depending on his seniority and track record to date) will not be getting assignments deep into the playoffs. So something like this does come back on the refs, and does hit them in the pocket-book. I don't know what else we can ask for. The human-error element will always be a factor, so you may as well quit hockey if you can't accept that.
Those of us who remember the state of refereeing in the mid-to-late 1980s (or, presumably, earlier) will also remember how unbelievable horrible it was then (with one ref, in the hack-and-wack goonery era). I watched games around 1988 when the referee literally cost Edmonton a victory due to his incompetence, and there was no accountability back then (there was in word, but not in deed). I have never seen anything approaching that level of incompetence in the past 10 years of the NHL, and in fact I would say the refereeing today is about 500% better than it has been at any time in League history.
There’s no conspiracy mandated by Bettman or the collective group of officials. It’s just straight up incompetence by the refs. There’s maybe 2 or 3 guys that are quality officials, the rest are inconsistent, incompetent bums who make things up as they go along. O’Halloran, Sutherland, McCauley are all usually decent. Peel and Meier are 2 of the worst. If they could just disregard the score and who had the most recent penalty and just call infractions as they seek them, that would be great/fair. Instead they try to manage the game by letting the dynamics influence their calls. Not calling penalties incurred by the offending team on McDavid because it’s “not fair” is beyond ridiculous.
TSN with a why didn’t anybody stand up for McDavid article.
TSN and Sportsnet are never going to call out the league unless Matthews gets this treatment from the refs.
Gambardella did?
When was the last time hampus lindholm dropped his gloves?
I don't think the NHL is devoid of integrity, or McDavid would be a Leaf.There is no integrity on the NHL. Never was and never will be .. as it's run by selfish clowns.
Drivesaitl, your post is well-written... but all of what you said is already understood as part of hockey since we've all been born. What has changed, however, is the officiating - that's why this story is about the refs.
Because I'm hopelessly verbose and could write a novel on this I'm separating this out. NHL officiating has always involved application distortion, threshold bias, interpretation in calling and "keeping it a fair fight" Indeed this seems to occur in anything. Try to explain why one drunk or speeding driver gets by with a warning and others get nailed everytime. Regardless of rules application is human. Its always subject to bias. Its subject to interpretation and even the human brain filling in the blanks distortion. Look up police records on victim or observer reports and human inter observer reliability is poor. Any cop will tell you this. We're terrible witnesses, observers. The human mind does not process incident objectively. People miss out all kinds of details. 5 different people will report 5 different events. Humans are just terrible at this. Its why more and more sports are going with automation. Tennis, Soccer, etc. Even when replay is involved and stop and go the event 25 times through 10 different angles and we're still terrible at assessing what went on. What should occur.
The funniest thing to me is that as humans we blame other humans (paid officials) for "not getting the call right" when we, amongst ourselves have demonstrated we can spend days and weeks disagreeing about a hockey event. a goal, an infraction, fault finding etc. Fact of the matter is we're probably all garbage at this. We're walking talking bias factories with myriad human filtering processes we don't even understand. We actually possess human brains that fill in content, unconsciously, when not all is seen. That our vision is not only what is seen through the lens but its edited before and at brain processing point. (People can read up much more on how human vision is process distorted)
All that said there has always been a notion that hockey should be in flow, that there should be thresholds on amount of calls and individual calls. This is not a new notion and its been oftstated. As much as we want calls at every turn we get similarly upset when a Colorado team gets 9pps in less than half a game. Simply ridiculous imo. There should be blood on the ice to warrant that number of calls. Its insane. It destroys the flow of the game, the outcome. How could Colorado possibly lose that game against the rangers having a PP for almost all the first half of the game? I can't watch a game with that many penalties for any one team. I change the channel. My first thought is its not even a game, it feels rigged.
Myself and others have discussed here that most hockey leagues have some unwritten level of how many calls in a game are acceptable. Its inescapable that thresholds in calls exist. That it is rarely black and white, but interpretation, and was that bad enough?
An alternative is Basketball type fouls Reach a certain amount of infractions in a game or period and some sanction occurs. Whether that be a penalty, a misconduct etc. Infractions would be team and player specific. Say 3 fouls by a team and you get a penalty. 3 fouls by a player and they get thrown out for 10mins or the game depending on severity. This would limit some serial committed infraction.
Hockey I think needs to look at more ways to enforce the game, without often interrupting the flow of the game which makes it such a compelling sport. Think about it. For me the best moments of hockey is where you have uninterrupted play, line changes and the play continuing with no whistles. The most frustrating thing is when hockey approaches basketball level stealth and everything is called and theres a stoppage every 5-10secs. Different infractions that don't involve stoppage in play but that are later incurred is the right answer to insure the flow of play in hockey. This would make for more infractions getting consequence and discouraged. It alters the conception that there should only be an acceptable amount of infractions in a game.
That hit is 5 and a game 99.9% of the time.