[CorsiHockeyLeague]

So many maddening, frustrating, downright terrible opinions in this thread. I'm utterly depressed reading this. FFS, people.

Originally Posted by transplant99

Do people really want regular season officiating in the playoffs?

No. Even regular season officiating isn't good enough. Once they fix regular season officiating though? Yes. I want them to call every penalty that is a penalty, regardless of what time of the season it is.

Originally Posted by transplant99

I have no idea who she is but i do know this....that her count as it would be with anyones, is purely subjective.

No! It's not! Or at the very least, it shouldn't be. Whether someone did a thing that is a penalty is black and white. You might argue that the way the rulebook defines penalties is bad and you don't want them called by the book the way it's currently written, but there is a book. There are (mostly) clear rules about what is a penalty and what isn't. If you watch closely, you can see if those things occurred. It's almost entirely objective. The only way it wouldn't be is if you think a referee's job is to only call some of the penalties to manage the game.

Originally Posted by ComixZone

The answer is very simple. Do away with game management, call the rule book, and make players adjust. The product will be better for it.

While I agree with this sentiment entirely, it's not that simple. They do have to change the rule book first. If this is how the game is going to be officiated, they have to adjust a lot of things. Embellishment needs to be a major priority. Suspensions need to change. The way officials are trained, held accountable and compensated needs to change. And the way people have had the game drilled into them for years isn't just a switch you flip overnight. It'll take some gradual adjustment.

But otherwise, yes, all of that.

Originally Posted by Locke

Have you read that rulebook? If they called it like its written you'd either have teams constantly trading powerplays or...you just couldnt play hockey at all.
If you called everything by the letter of the law it would be the most boring game in the world.

Why... Why must people assume that if they did actually call it, that guys would just keep hooking, holding and cross checking people? This is so, so dumb. Yes, there would be way more penalties for a while... and then the players would stop cross checking people when they're trying to dig the puck out of the corner, because they'd been called for it the last ten times they did it. The game would be played differently. Again, this requires adjustment, but the adjustment would gradually happen.

And then it would be more exciting, because the best offensive players would not have to deal with slashes, hooks, holds, and other infractions that aren't quite severe enough to warrant a call under the current standards. Guys with the ability to walk around slower opposition would actually do it and not immediately get their gloves smashed with a stick.

Originally Posted by Cali Panthers Fan

Then he tries to apply a data set of 1182 shifts to 121, so like 1% of the original data set. [...] Holy ####, get this guy a stats class ASAP. This is poor mathematical reasoning through and through.

If you somehow concluded that 121 is 1% of 1182, I'd say he's not the one who needs the class.

Then he gets into the culture of playoff hockey where fewer penalties are called overall, but not really. I've been watching a series between the Panthers and Lightning, and they're calling the penalties that are dangerous and affect the play, as well as managing the emotions and violence by calling retaliatory plays.

This is literally just game management. If that's what you want, the status quo, okay I guess, but I can't ####ing stand it. And the next thing you say is exactly why.

If you over officiate the playoff games, the players are taken out of the equation and it becomes a game of special teams. You may as well have a shootout at that point.

No. No no no no no.

This needs to be hammered into people's heads.

NO.

Calling penalties on players when they commit penalties does NOT "take the players out of the game". It results in the players determining the outcome of the game. If you are a player, and you commit a penalty, and your team loses because the other team scores on the power play, you, as a player, have influenced the outcome of the game. It's your fault. It's not the referee's fault for penalizing you. If you, as a player, commit a penalty, and a ref decides not to call it, the referee has influenced the outcome of the game.

You're literally advocating for a system where the amount of penalties called - and therefore the amount of cheating (because that is what penalties are, you're breaking the rules of hockey) that is allowed is determined on a discretionary basis by the referees. In this system, they are the ones controlling the game. It's only in the case where they're effectively machines, strictly applying the rules, that they aren't influencing the outcome, because in that case, they literally have no choice: if you committed an infraction, they have to call it. It's out of their hands, and in yours.

And this is very obvious. In the current NHL, early in just about every game, by paying attention to what's getting called and what isn't, you know how the game is going to be played. That is entirely determined by who is refereeing and what their version of "judgment" is. That's not a professional sports league that's worthy of being taken seriously... it's garbage.

Originally Posted by blender

Read the article yesterday and my first thought was when this makes its way to CP a bunch of people will be triggered by the McDavid reference and instantly dismiss the whole thing as whining. Exactly what happened here, of course. The lack of objectivity about anything related to McDavid here is embarrassing.

I really, really hope this is what it is. That the selection of McDavid as the article's focus is just something that a Flames message board cannot get past. Because otherwise, the sheer volume of awful, heinous, absurd, unforgivably bad takes in this thread eliminates all hope that this sport could be better in the future.

Stop letting players get away with cheating. Certainly stop letting them get away with more cheating in the games that matter most. The NBA doesn't have this right either because they call things differently depending on who is getting fouled and what team they play for, but at the very least they fundamentally understand that star players being free to do incredible things on offense is what's best about watching your sport.