Oh, thank you. I totally didn’t catch the difference when looking at this, although of course I was aware that they are two different things! It just seemed even more absurd than usual that such a thing could be routinely overlooked!
Can I blame it on sleep deprivation? I’m running on only about 3 hours here!
That makes much more sense. Next time I have a question regarding your posts, I’ll take it up with mnemosyne.
NBC announcers are dumber than a sack of pucks and far less useful to hockey. Boychuk could have and should have pulled up on that check instead of pushing harder. A suspension would’ve helped drive the point home.
I’d be just as worried they call every single minor infraction. Not saying that it’s better to ignore the big stuff. It’s not. I just worry we’re going to get caught on every possible interference, slash, trip, and the like and spend most of the game on various power plays in an effort to keep the game sanitized for the audience’s protection.
I think you have little to worry about. I’m pretty confident the refs have already received the phone call that told them:
“Don’t interrupt the flow of the game, just ignore any little hacks, jabs, trips or holding, and if a player really obviously flaunts it in front of you, don’t forget to call the other player for diving. Especially those little wussy girly Vancouver players.”
ETA: Still waiting for a 2 minute call against a Canuck for “unsportsmanlike bleeding”
It’s really quite unlikely the refs can do a good job at this point. The behaviour in the series is hopelessly out of control. What will probably happen is we’ll get goonery. The refs will then either not call it, which will be a disgrace, or will call everything, which will be a disgrace.
Their ability to successfully call tonight’s game has bene compromised by the shitty rules enforcement we’ve been seeing in this series (which actually is a problem going back a long time, but it’s been terrible in this series.)
I mean, I have now seen a guy get a 10-minute penalty for being punched. It can’t get any worse. But I fear it will not get better.
In 1993 I was at Maple Leaf Gardens for game 7 of the semifinals between the Leafs and [del]Gretzky[/del] the Kings. When Los Angeles won the game it was like a funeral procession. People exited MLG and quietly boarded subways and left. There were police on horseback awaiting the potential melee. It was so depressing that you could have talked to someone across the street without yelling.
I never imagined a series that went 7 games could be this bad. We could have at least had a thrilling Game 7 to close it off well, but apparently Vancouver dressed their AHL affiliate.
Thomas is in their heads. They looked scared with the puck on their stick.