NHL officiating has always been terrible and arguably the worst in North American professional sports. They have long taken it upon themselves to manage games (ignore blatant infractions to keep games close or make incredibly weak calls to aid the team trailing in the 3rd period) when that's not their job and they constantly make calls based on what they think happened rather than what they saw with their own eyes just as happened in this case. Officials see a player in close proximity to another fall and therefore in their mind it had to be a penalty even though they could not see any contact.
|