I actually prefer playoff officiating to regular officiating.
Then make that the standard all the time. I don't care but the "rules" are different in the playoffs and Regular season. NHL is the only league that has different standards between playoff and regular season.
I actually prefer playoff officiating to regular officiating.
I don't know - the Blues were allowed to mug their way to the Cup. It was awful hockey to watch, and I don't think they were really the best team. Berube knew the refs weren't going to call anything, which is kind of smart I guess,
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.
Sorry, I have to disagree.
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.
I bitch about Refs as much as anyone, and I hate the 'Game Management' nonsense, but I do understand that there has to be discretion in Reffing and Policing.
If you called everything by the letter of the law it would be the most boring game in the world.
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The NHL officiating may at times be an embarrassment, but that article is equally embarrassing. Pure editorial opinion and almost no actual reporting. Well done.
The clip he puts in as "evidence" of missed calls are is a play that was unfortunate. There was the "knee" by Demelo on McDavid. Except Demelo turns his body to the side and McDavid leaps to avoid him and his leg gets caught. It's unfortunate incidental contact, and not a penalty because all Demelo did was step up into McDavid's ice. Is this one of those "right of way" penalties again?
Then he says "he only is 21st in penalties drawn per 60 behind players like Derek Ryan and Ryan Lomberg". Well yeah, Dom. It's a per 60 stat. McDavid plays like 30 minutes a game and those other guys play like 10, but they're aggressive on the forecheck and draw a fair share of penalties. Besides, 21st for a player like McDavid with his ice time isn't anything to get upset about. Next.
Then he tries to apply a data set of 1182 shifts to 121, so like 1% of the original data set. Even in the original data set he says McDavid had a 2.5% chance of drawing a penalty on a shift, but didn't draw one once in the smaller sample, which only had a 5% chance on a "normal distribution". Yeah, Dom. That's what happens when you have limited data sets, you get strange outliers and that means you cannot and should not draw any conclusions from it. Instead of acknowledging that it's random chance, he says it cannot be random and it's intentional. Then does the same process based on 4 games last year and somehow is shocked that a small data set again with small odds of an event occurring in the first place leads to shockingly weird outlier data.
Holy ####, get this guy a stats class ASAP. This is poor mathematical reasoning through and through.
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. 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.
He goes on to mention 5 obvious "missed calls" in overtime after the Yamamoto penalty, but doesn't show a clip or describe what he considered a missed call, so again, sounds like opinion rather than fact to me.
Then there's this part which I simply find ridiculous:
Quote:
And that’s not on the referees either. They’re not bad at their jobs, they’re quite good at fulfilling their mandate and doing what’s asked of them. All of this is by design because this, for whatever reason, is what the league wants.
So yeah, the league who makes bank by having hugely marketable stars do well in the playoffs is intentionally telling referees to let the grinders have their way on McDavid? Puh-lease. Think about that sentence just for a second and tell me if it makes any sense.
But here's the thing that Dom never really gets, it happens for both teams, so the standard is the same. It's not like the Jets do not have a single player that doesn't get held, hooked, or impeded in some way. Do non-calls on Nik Ehlers deserve a special look? Nah, because he isn't the game's biggest marketable star.
To me, this is someone trying to rationalize how a great regular season player like McDavid could look so ordinary in the playoffs. It's a hack job article, and if I were the editor, I wouldn't have published it. Poor reasoning, specious evidence, confirmation bias, and a made up narrative without anything credible to back it up. Awful journalism, and that's coming from someone who usually likes what Dom has to write.
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Last edited by Cali Panthers Fan; 05-26-2021 at 12:27 PM.
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I bet if you isolated any player playing over 20 minutes you could pick out 30 plays over the course of a few games that could (ie NOT should) have been penalties, playoffs or not.
Exactly. Just like there’s always holding in the NFL, there’s likely technical holding, slashing (since it can be on the stick) or interference almost every shift or so in the NHL.
To me, this is someone trying to rationalize how a great regular season player like McDavid could look so ordinary in the playoffs.
This is key. Even an outsider like Stephen A. Smith can't understand how the Oilers went down so easy based on the prolific numbers McDavid put up in the regular season. The reality is McDavid simply didn't play well in the series. He was a ghost in the first two games and in the NHL you aren't going to draw penalties if you aren't dictating the pace of the game.
All I have heard from my Oilers buddies over the last 7 years is how Gaudreau isn't built for playoff hockey so I find it quite humorous they expect a small player to fight through the obstruction that their golden boy himself can't. I don't like how the NHL playoffs are officiated but it's been this way forever and this isn't new so McDavid either needs to find another gear in the playoffs or the Oilers are going to continue to be playoff fodder.
Last edited by Erick Estrada; 05-26-2021 at 12:42 PM.
The NHL officiating may at times be an embarrassment, but that article is equally embarrassing. Pure editorial opinion and almost no actual reporting. Well done.
The clip he puts in as "evidence" of missed calls are is a play that was unfortunate. There was the "knee" by Demelo on McDavid. Except Demelo turns his body to the side and McDavid leaps to avoid him and his leg gets caught. It's unfortunate incidental contact, and not a penalty because all Demelo did was step up into McDavid's ice. Is this one of those "right of way" penalties again?
Then he says "he only is 21st in penalties drawn per 60 behind players like Derek Ryan and Ryan Lomberg". Well yeah, Dom. It's a per 60 stat. McDavid plays like 30 minutes a game and those other guys play like 10, but they're aggressive on the forecheck and draw a fair share of penalties. Besides, 21st for a player like McDavid with his ice time isn't anything to get upset about. Next.
Then he tries to apply a data set of 1182 shifts to 121, so like 1% of the original data set. Even in the original data set he says McDavid had a 2.5% chance of drawing a penalty on a shift, but didn't draw one once in the smaller sample, which only had a 5% chance on a "normal distribution". Yeah, Dom. That's what happens when you have limited data sets, you get strange outliers and that means you cannot and should not draw any conclusions from it. Instead of acknowledging that it's random chance, he says it cannot be random and it's intentional. Then does the same process based on 4 games last year and somehow is shocked that a small data set again with small odds of an event occurring in the first place leads to shockingly weird outlier data.
Holy ####, get this guy a stats class ASAP. This is poor mathematical reasoning through and through.
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. 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.
He goes on to mention 5 obvious "missed calls" in overtime after the Yamamoto penalty, but doesn't show a clip or describe what he considered a missed call, so again, sounds like opinion rather than fact to me.
Then there's this part which I simply find ridiculous:
So yeah, the league who makes bank by having hugely marketable stars do well in the playoffs is intentionally telling referees to let the grinders have their way on McDavid? Puh-lease. Think about that sentence just for a second and tell me if it makes any sense.
But here's the thing that Dom never really gets, it happens for both teams, so the standard is the same. It's not like the Jets do not have a single player that doesn't get held, hooked, or impeded in some way. Do non-calls on Nik Ehlers deserve a special look? Nah, because he isn't the game's biggest marketable star.
To me, this is someone trying to rationalize how a great regular season player like McDavid could look so ordinary in the playoffs. It's a hack job article, and if I were the editor, I wouldn't have published it. Poor reasoning, specious evidence, confirmation bias, and a made up narrative without anything credible to back it up. Awful journalism, and that's coming from someone who usually likes what Dom has to write.
The problem is there are thousands of Oilers/McDavid fans so in a world where clicks is all that matters you’d be a fool not to publish it.
What a time to be alive eh?!
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I fully admit that I have no idea what the bar is for interference
The chip and chase with the defender stopping the chaser is a hugely inconsistent call. The refs must have some sort of internal standard we don’t know about. Three steps or something.
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The chip and chase with the defender stopping the chaser is a hugely inconsistent call. The refs must have some sort of internal standard we don’t know about. Three steps or something.
I was just thinking of that.
The attacker chips it in, the defender holds him up...I can see 2-3 calls right there but....nothing ever happens.
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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.
I bitch about Refs as much as anyone, and I hate the 'Game Management' nonsense, but I do understand that there has to be discretion in Reffing and Policing.
If you called everything by the letter of the law it would be the most boring game in the world.
When tax rules change, do you continue doing what you've always done, or adjust to find new strategies?
The rulebook needs a significant overhaul and simplification. A lot of rules are relics from the days of wooden flat bladed sticks, no helmets, 30 kph top speeds, and terrible goalie equipment.
The game is so fast and the refs have to watch for a lot of things that are kinda irrelevant.
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I like Dom but I thought the article was really poor the way it was written. The fundamental point he is trying to make is a good one, but the approach was grating and designed to incite emotional reactions which is unfortunate. It should have been focused on all stars in the playoffs but for whatever reason (clickbait?) he didn't go that direction.
As for those saying Dom is bitter McDavid didn't perform or the ultimate insult: that he's an Oilers fan...I know for a fact Dom had several thousand dollars riding on a Jets series victory (as did I). He was cheering hard for the Jets make no mistake about it. All he's saying is let the stars be stars and call the rule book.
Another thing to note is that in handicapping series this year, many of us took into account referring assignments. Essentially treating each division as independent leagues. The North division draw was exceptionally tilted toward "let them play" officials so the low penalty rates aren't surprising at all.
This graphic, via Jeff Veillette, should help remove some emotional from the topic. Stars largely get screwed in the regular season and that compounds in the playoffs. It's nothing new.
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I like Dom but I thought the article was really poor the way it was written. The fundamental point he is trying to make is a good one, but the approach was grating and designed to incite emotional reactions which is unfortunate. It should have been focused on all stars in the playoffs but for whatever reason (clickbait?) he didn't go that direction.
As for those saying Dom is bitter McDavid didn't perform or the ultimate insult: that he's an Oilers fan...I know for a fact Dom had several thousand dollars riding on a Jets series victory (as did I). He was cheering hard for the Jets make no mistake about it. All he's saying is let the stars be stars and call the rule book.
Another thing to note is that in handicapping series this year, many of us took into account referring assignments. Essentially treating each division as independent leagues. The North division draw was exceptionally tilted toward "let them play" officials so the low penalty rates aren't surprising at all.
This graphic, via Jeff Veillette, should help remove some emotional from the topic. Stars largely get screwed in the regular season and that compounds in the playoffs. It's nothing new.
I don’t understand the point of that graphic. Different high scoring players draw different levels of penalties? All good players and penalties drawn are all over the map
Winnipeg contained McD by having good structure, taking away time and space and he ended up kept to the outside a lot. He didn’t play particularly well. Tried to do things individually but Wpg’s structure was good.
