Not playing the victim card, but just in the last two games, when Ferarro is tripped on a breakaway right in front of the ref and Trotman is blatantly slew-footed, and when McQuaid is boarded head-first and knocked out, again right IN FRONT of the ref (resulting in a suspension no less), and the Bruins are ridiculously low in PP opportunities, fans have the right to wonder WTF is going on.
And the "the Bruins don't skate fast enough to draw penalties" line is a canard. You don't have to be a speedster to draw a penalty.
It's not a conspiracy. IMHO it's buried deep in many officials' subconscious that the guys in black are tougher than anyone, and the split-second choice to blow the whistle is subsumed by that prejudice.
Totally this!
By the way, see this study from Cornell:
http://faculty.smu.edu/chrisl/courses/psyc5351/articles/blackuniforms.pdf
"First, because referees are also likely to associate the color black with evil and aggressiveness, they may view any given action as more malevolent if it is performed by a player in a black uniform.
Thus, players in black uniforms may not play the game any more aggressively, but may simply be more likely to be penalized for actions that would be ignored if performed by players wearing nonblack uniforms."
"These data provide strong support for a "social perception" interpretation of the observed tendency for professional sports teams that wear black uniforms to be penalized more than their rivals. Teams that wear black uniforms receive harsher treatment from the referees. Because we associate the color black with meanness and aggressiveness, we "see" more aggressiveness or more malevolent intent in the actions of players wearing black uniforms."
"Perhaps the most telling evidence that the inordinate number of penalties amassed by black-uniformed teams is at least partially due to the judgments of referees is that our sample of experienced officials--who actually make the calls in real college and high school football games--indicated that they would call a "tighter" game when the team they had seen was wearing black uniforms."
"These results, in conjunction with the findings of Study 3, suggest that the excessive penalties amassed by black-uniformed teams in professional sports stem from two distinct processes--their own aggressiveness and harsher treatment by the referees.
It should be noted, however, that at this point we can place more confidence in the role played by the referees than by the players themselves. The effect of referees' judgments was directly assessed by having real referees do what they are paid to
do--make judgments about the legality of various actions in the game of football. In contrast, our demonstration that wearing black uniforms increased subjects' willingness to act aggressively involved only intended aggression and did not employ
any real football or hockey players as subjects."
"The way in which a visual stimulus like a black uniform can affect the judgment of referees is rather straightforward. There is now a large literature documenting how people's mental sets can distort their judgment and perception of events (Gilovich, 1981, 1983; Langer & Abelson, 1974; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Snyder & Uranowitz, 1978; Zadny & Gerard, 1974). However, the ways in which wearing a black uniform might affect the behavior of the wearer may seem less clear."
The thing that doesn't fit here though is that the Bs' problem is not that they're being called too much, but that the other teams are not being called.
