Eat a puck, referees.
What a load of !^&#ing malarkey. In the immortal words of Ray Ferarro: "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen!I'm still beyond disgusted an evening's sleep later. What bothers me the most is the fact that the NHL will most likely just shrug their shoulders, go "Our bad", and then merrily move along without so much as punishing the referees for last night's gaffe.Patrik StefanBrad Watson and Chris Spada, you should be embarrassed for what you just did! That does not belong in the National Hockey League!"
In case you don't know what I am talking about, here is the overview: At 2:39 of the first period, a scrum ensues with a few Blue Jackets players and Sharks players on the ice, resulting in coincidental minors between Manny Malhotra and Ryane Clowe. So both teams are now playing 4-on-4. However just 33 seconds later, Rusty Klesla clips a Shark, and gets sent to the box as well. That's fine ... in all honesty, he did get caught giving the wood to a player accidentally with a high stick.
On the ensuing 4-on-3 power play, the Sharks score on a weird angle shot from Patrick Marleau. So now it's 1-0 Sharks. This is where things get weird and extremely stupid. Instead of sending Klesla out of the box, they instead send Malhotra out.
Why? Well, apparently in the delusional, dreamland minds of referees Watson and Spada, some new rule had been implemented, where if two players were sent to the box, if they weren't "matching" minors and just "coincidental" minors, the team that was scored on during a power play sends that player out first if they also have another player in the box with a minor.
In short: What in the [expletive] Hell!?
So Klesla is forced to stay in the box. Of course, a gaffe like this -- and against the number one power play in the league -- is like dumping a bucket of chum all over someone and throwing them in to a shark tank at Sea World. 38 seconds later the Sharks score again, the score is now 2-0, and that pretty much is the end of that.
The thing that I hate most of all about what happened is that you really have no idea how the game would have turned out if this didn't happen. The obvious assumption is "Well, they would have definitely played better if that never happened." And that might very well be true, too; the Jackets pretty much lost themselves in being pissed off, it seemed, and instead of using their heads the rest of the game, began to get chippy -- too chippy -- and extremely stupid when it came to a variety of the penalties levied against them throughout. Then again, who knows? Maybe they would've actually done even worse for some strange reason if the penalty box fiasco was actually handled in the proper way.
All I know is this: Watson and Spada should be sat down for a game after what happened. Will that happen? No, of course not ... the game was not only not close, with the Sharks winning 5-2, but it was also just a fluke against a team like the Blue Jackets. Don't start thinking I am getting some sort of persecution complex here, but you know that if this had happened to a team like the Red Wings or possibly even the Maple Leafs, there'd be Hell and high water unless the league at least publicly punished the referees involved, be it just embarrassing them or actually suspending them for a game or two.
Labels: Blue Jackets, post-game, referees, Sharks
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At 6:00 PM,
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At 3:16 AM,
PJ Swenson said…
The Blue Jackets were skating hard in the first, but after Fedorov went down it was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Svitov was good in spurts, but Modin was the only one really creating quality scoring chances consitently, and he was often 1-on-2 or 1-on-3.
Norrena looks good, but there was a couple of times that he came out a few feet past the blueline. Foote became the de facto villan for the game, and he seemed to lose his composure towards the end.
Too bad I did not get to see Nash or Leclaire, two of the players I want to see, or much of Fedorov. -
This doesn't make any sense. And I have to agree with you that if something like that happened to one of the "big" hockey teams, this would be plastered across the pages. And Gary Bettmen would have to crawl out of his Hobbit hole to issue a pedantic both-sides-of-the-mouth statement about how the league is looking into it. Boo!
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At 10:40 PM,
said…
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At 12:14 AM,
Miss. Scarlett said…
Nothing will come of this because the NHL won't care. Simply because it didn't happen against a Canadian team. If it happened against Toronto the Toronto media would be all over this and give the league a black eye.
Unfortunately the Columbus newspapers are otherwise occupied right now, and the league just shrugs it's shoulders because "It's just Columbus"