[News] Luszczyszyn: NHL playoff officiating is an embarrassment..

[dino7c]

Are the Panthers and Lightning complaining? or is anyone complaining about that series? because they have let more go in that one than all the others IMO.

Seems like the best series to me


Oilers fans/media complained about the Archibald penalty but apparently want everything called...oh you mean everything on the other team lol

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by transplant99

But is it?

Football is a great example.

They call PI sometimes on identical plays that they also dont call it on. And the reason is, these guys are not robots all identically programmed. It is all subjective to a certain degree.

And thats why over the glass is at least a penalty that cannot be argued. If it goes over the glass straight off a stick, its a penalty.

To me we are trying to fix an unfixable problem unless human beings are removed from the equation completely.

Yes, it is subjective. Those are either missed calls or not deemed a foul due to interpretation. The ref didn't think it was a foul.

He did not, not call the foul due to circumstance. (sorry for the double negative)

[Itse]

I've said this before, but IMO one of the problems is that hockey rules are just badly written in a way that makes it extremely difficult to fix the officiating. There are too many rules with too many details.

For example, boarding, charging, cross-checking, elbowing, slashing, high-sticking, spearing, kneeing etc. are really just variations on roughing, or perhaps dangerous play if it's the major penalty stuff. Tripping, hooking, holding the stick and holding are all just types of interference.

I think most would agree that it's not realistic to remove referee discretion from such a fast and physical game like hockey with long stretches of continuous play. So write the rules with referee discretion in mind. Replace the numerous different penalties with unique definitions with just a few broadly worded ones.

People are pretty good at dealing with the kind of ambiguity a few broad rules would create, but they're usually really bad at following long lists of detailed instructions.

The current list should really be more like a guideline to players on what not to do, but I think if you allowed refs to really lean on their own judgment, they would probably do a better job than now in finding a consistent way to call things.

And stop with the game management crap. It only improves the product for people who are watching their first hockey games and don't realize what's going on. Everyone else is just constantly annoyed by the inconsistency that creates. Plus it's another thing to unnecessarily occupy the minds of refs when they should be calling what they see on the ice.

[868904]

Gaudreau has been smothered in the playoffs since the first playoff series he ever played and has also had his hand broken by a slash.

But of course, NHL officiating sucks when the great Connor McDavid and the Oilers get swept.

[Joborule]

Originally Posted by Zarley

I actually prefer playoff officiating to regular officiating.

I'm kinda the same boat. For the playoffs, I don't really take issue at all with the officiating since they mostly let the players play; especially in OT. They only call the most obvious stuff.

Wish their could be consistency between regular season hockey and playoff hockey, but know that kinda of calling would bring it back to pre-lockout clutching and grabbing hockey. I suppose though that this brings in the game management aspect to regular season hockey since they want those games to feel close depending on the situation.

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Originally Posted by blender

I'm laughing at this thread.

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.

Regardless of any specific incident or player, we all know there is a problem with the officiating in the NHL and on that count Dom has it right on. It is a joke, and the league looks bad for it. It doesn't have anything to do with McDavid, and Dom may have alienated Calgary fans by using him as a case in point, but it doesn't devalue his argument.

Correct, except his argument was poorly formed. See my post for details. It's a poor case made, full stop. It has nothing to do with McDavid.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Coach

NHL officiating is a joke.

McDavid not getting calls is not because of this reason.

Exactly.

Meanwhile, Nate MacKinnon continues to destroy other teams as he flirts with a 2.0 pts/GP pace in the playoffs. He doesn't seem to be terribly bothered by NHL officiating.


Sent from my SM-G960W using Tapatalk

[Philly06Cup]

There are fewer calls in the playoffs compared to regular season. This is bad for skilled players.



Game management, in regular season and playoffs, is bad. It's unfair, and the lack of consistency is infuriating.



Both of these combined makes NHL officiating an embarrassment.



These arguments seem very clear and obvious

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by Philly06Cup

There are fewer calls in the playoffs compared to regular season. This is bad for skilled players.

Game management, in regular season and playoffs, is bad. It's unfair, and the lack of consistency is infuriating.

Both of these combined makes NHL officiating an embarrassment.

These arguments seem very clear and obvious

I agree.

However, ‘NHL officiating is an embarrassment because I want to see Connor McDavid draw more penalties’ is an argument that is equally clear, and obviously invalid.

If you support a correct conclusion with an invalid argument, the best you can do is make people doubt the conclusion. They are liable to assume that the argument you made is the best one you could have made.

[Aarongavey]

Originally Posted by CalgaryFan1988

So do I, but the fact that there are two standards is a joke.

There are more than two standards. There are at least 3. There is playoff hockey, regular season hockey for average or general players and then regular season hockey for offensive superstars. I can even remember an offensive superstar that threw an elbow on a young Montreal forward, a direct headshot, and despite that superstar being a repeat offender for headshots, he escaped a suspension. His first headshot was so egregious even the NHL could not avoid suspending him. But they managed to avoid it on the second one, if Parros tradition is an indicator should have been a 4 or 5 game suspension. That probably does not happen for a guy like Kadri.

[Ped]

Originally Posted by dino7c

Are the Panthers and Lightning complaining? or is anyone complaining about that series? because they have let more go in that one than all the others IMO.l

The Lightning have been quite vocal, in fact.

The Lightning won 6-2, taking a commanding 3-1 series lead heading into Game 5 in Sunrise. Their dynamic power play continued to shine, scoring twice, with Kucherov and Killorn picking up four points. Andrei Vasilevskiy shut the door with 39 saves. The penalty kill went 5-for-6 in a wild first period. That should be the story.
Instead, the focus surrounded the 26 penalties, five misconducts and a few line brawls. All of this could have been avoided.

“When your players are being told, ‘Don’t do anything stupid, we’re going to get you,’ and the other team is getting rewarded, I don’t get it,” Cooper said. “It’s really frustrating because people come to watch a really intense, good hockey game, and liberties are being taken. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not angels out there. I’m not sitting here saying that, far from it.
“But when there’s a standard set and we’re being told things are going to be called and when it doesn’t get done, there’s just confusion. I’ll give our guys a ton of credit for sticking with and battling through embellishments and non-calls after non-calls after non-calls and having so many not go the way we want.”

You can tell from the reaction from our bench that it’s not the cleanest play,” Hedman said. “But it’s out of my reach. We can’t do anything about it now. If it was dirty, we know we have people looking at it. We’ll see.” Like Cooper said, the Lightning “aren’t angels,” either. There have been some questionable hits on both sides, though the only suspension has been for Sam Bennett’s boarding of Blake Coleman in Game 1. Panthers fans are likely upset with Ryan McDonagh for his takedown of Mason Marchment a few games ago.

Craig Berube wasn't particularly happy either.

[savemedrzaius]

The knee on McDavid was pretty blatant. When I was watching it live I couldn't believe it went uncalled. Dangerous play too.

[dino7c]

Originally Posted by Philly06Cup

There are fewer calls in the playoffs compared to regular season. This is bad for skilled players.



Game management, in regular season and playoffs, is bad. It's unfair, and the lack of consistency is infuriating.



Both of these combined makes NHL officiating an embarrassment.



These arguments seem very clear and obvious

hockey has been better the last week though IMO...much better

[Infinit47]

Is Eugene Melnyk's detective available to investigate the league and their vendetta against McDavid and the Oilers?

In all seriousness, it would be pretty easy to do this same count for other star players instead of jumping on the poor McDavid bandwagon.

And I do believe star players should be better protected. But McDavid isn't going into the corners and getting abused like Crosby did. We are talking about little tricky tacky calls that he isn't getting, and likely those exist for all players in the game.

[Philly06Cup]

Originally Posted by dino7c

hockey has been better the last week though IMO...much better

Because Playoff Hockey is that freaking good.

[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.

[united]

Originally Posted by cali panthers fan

holy ####, get this guy a stats class asap. This is poor mathematical reasoning through and through.

Originally Posted by cali panthers fan

tampa in 4.

I can't believe that anyone is giving columbus a chance in this series.

Yeah, yeah, "it's the playoffs, anything can happen!"

b.s. Tampa is a runaway favorite to go to the cup final. In a league full of parity, they established throughout the year that they were operating on another plane of existence.

Tampa bay in 4, and it will be 4 very decisive wins. zero chance for the inconsistent blue jackets.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1118328816517242880

[memphusk]

Originally Posted by savemedrzaius

The knee on McDavid was pretty blatant. When I was watching it live I couldn't believe it went uncalled. Dangerous play too.

What Knee?

[memphusk]

Originally Posted by Philly06Cup

Because Playoff Hockey is that freaking good.

Especially with fans.

[savemedrzaius]

Originally Posted by memphusk

what knee?

https://twitter.com/user/status/1397035474124894215