If the officials really WERE favouring the Pens, then the Red Wings not only showed how to efficiently dispatch an opponent, but they also showed what happens when a team is able to adapt, improvise, and overcome.

Posted by The Acid Queen from Raleigh, NC on 06/08/08 at 09:01 PM ET

Acid Queen has it about right. 
I don’t think the NHL has ever been able to completely eliminate bias from officiating.
Maybe the game is just so fast, and so much is happening, that officiating becomes somewhat subjective… You see what you are looking for.

Sometimes they lean to help the losing team.
Sometimes it is the home team. 
Sometimes they just back off and let the teams fight it out on the ice.
Sometimes they just want to even up the penalties.

Clearly, in these playoffs, they were focused on protecting the goalie, and going to the net is Detroit’s game.
I don’t think they were pro-Pittsburgh or anti-Detroit per se’, but I am sure the training films featured Thomas Holmstrom in the paint.

Posted by w2j2 on 06/08/08 at 09:27 PM ET

I find it alarming now that writers outside the DET or PIT markets are asking these questions too and still.

Maybe the question then should be asked—if there was an officiating slant favoring the Pens, should DET have swept otherwise?

Posted by Primis on 06/08/08 at 09:28 PM ET

I find it alarming now that writers outside the DET or PIT markets are asking these questions too and still.

Agreed.  It’s one thing if the questions are being asked by those who likely aren’t entirely unbiased, even if they are trying to be fair, because they have a rooting interest.  Those who aren’t “on the side” of one team or the other asking questions is a bit different.

This was the bit from the article that bothered me the most (empasis mine):

But the officials chose not to end the Penguins’ season. In fact, for the first time in all my years of viewing hockey, I was overwhelmed by a sense that there existed a desperate need to keep this series going for the good of the game, no matter how far rule interpretations had to be stretched.

The most difficult part came once the series began to gain momentum and it became abundantly obvious the television ratings in the U.S. were building with every game and the league was sending out press releases to one and all that this was the case.

It isn’t the job of the officials to keep a series going to maintain public interest - it’s their job to call penalties when they see them.

Of 10 experienced media types consulted about the officiating after the series, not one said they thought it was all right.

The responses of most can be summed up with a simple head shake and the response “not good.”

It’s one thing for officiating to just be putrid - if the league was attempting to “even things up” for the Penguins by giving them more 5-on-3 time on purpose in an attempt to keep the series going, if not to give Pittsburgh a better chance of winning - that’s scripting the series, not letting the players decide.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 06/08/08 at 10:11 PM ET

Give me a break, it seems that most reporters are doing this just to keep the season going.  The Red Wings had more powerplay opportunities than the Penguins over the course of the series.  There were questionable calls on both sides.  If we begin watching the Refs, and expecting bad or missed calls, that’s exactly what you’re going to see.  i was happy to finally see two teams that can skate and carry the puck play (after the first two games of course).

Posted by Greg on 06/08/08 at 10:13 PM ET

Just looking at PP totals is pretty silly, though.  Detroit had the puck a large majority of the time in the series, so yeah, by definition the Pens should have a ton more opportunity to commit penalties, being on defense so often.

Like the author said (and like I said before the round even started) the league offices were going to stretch things as far as they could plausibly deny they stretched it to keep Pittsburgh in the series, but that in the end it wouldn’t be enough.

At the end of the day, just look at the timing of the calls.  The 5-on-3’s.  The late game and OT calls.  The late game and OT non-calls.  Vastly, vastly in favor of the Pens.

Posted by HockeyinHD on 06/08/08 at 10:54 PM ET

I agree that there is a problem with NHL officiating, but they weren’t consciously trying to extend the Pens’ season. Instead, its part of penalty calls based on circumstances:
- making sure the penalties are balanced (not giving one team too many penalties, if one team got a weak call, give the other team the next call)
- influence of coach complaining
- reputation of players involved on giving & receiving end of infractions
- letting stuff go in critical times of the game

Go back to Game 5 of the Sabres-Rangers series. Zubrus tripped up two players off the faceoff in the last 12 seconds. One of the players tripped was supposed to cover Drury. There was no outcry though, because the Sabres were expected to win that series anyways.

The NHL needs to rethink how they train their officials. Calls should NOT be reputation calls, they should only be based on what is seen and infractions should be called regardless of what time is left in the game.

Posted by bcrt on 06/09/08 at 12:19 AM ET

i perceived that while both teams had plenty of calls, the calls that went to the penguins were ACTUAL penalties, while a large amount of calls against the red wings were questionable to nonexistent. the favoritism was at times staggering. i’m glad someone came out and said something publicly about this.

Posted by christpuncher from Asheville, NC on 06/09/08 at 12:22 AM ET

At last someone with the cajones to raise publicly what everyone has been thinking to themselves.  As I wrote yesterday, the NHL seemed intent on rewarding one team for being outplayed and to penalize the team that had earned the lead.  They clearly gifted the Pens the Game 5 OT opportunities and the end of Game 6, both putting the Pens on their 2d goal PP and the shameful episodes mentioned in the article including the blatant hauling down of Datsyuk that deprived Detroit the clear opportunity to salt the game away.

It had been well established after 2 games that Detroit was dominating 5 x 5, at one time in the series outscoring 8-2 even strength, which is why Therrien began his shameless begging for interference calls against Detroit, who year after year is the least penalized team in the NHL.  It paid off for Therrien in a big way.

You can’t merely look at total penalties as many of Pittsburgh’s came at the end of Game 2, already trailing 0-3, when they began the cowardly, John Brophy-like sucker punching attempts to degenerate the game and series into something other than the skating and passing clinic the Red Wings were putting on them.

This series began to smell like Gary Bettman, which is not pleasant at all.

Posted by RWBill from Back aboard the Hasek. on 06/09/08 at 02:12 PM ET

It got to the point, near the end of the series, that many of my friends and I watching wouldn’t celebrate a goal until we were positive the officials wouldn’t waive it off.  Between the Dallas and Pittsburgh series, we saw two Homer goals that should have been legal waived off.

Then there’s the aforementioned calls, non-calls.

Screw you, Gary Bettman.

Posted by Hippy Dave from San Francisco by way of Detroit on 06/09/08 at 02:28 PM ET

I think the biggest problem with officiating (other than inconsistency from one referee pair to the next) is that the referees factor in too many variables other than what they see with their own eyes.

Player reputation is the one that irritates me the most. Red Wings fans saw this acutely with some of the phantom interference calls on Holmstrom throughout the last two playoff series. Penguin fans are very aware of this in the treatment of one Jarkko Ruutu. Didn’t see very much of him in the finals, huh? Well, he receives penalties for things he doesn’t do and Pittsburgh couldn’t take the chance of playing him in key situations because of that. On numerous occasions throughout the year, Ruutu mouthed off at player X, was punched by player X, didn’t retaliate and received a roughing penalty, anyway. Sometimes the only roughing penalty.

This kind of thing can’t be reduced to favorability towards certain teams, though, as the bias is not consistent throughout each team. I mentioned that Ruutu (whose play can not be characterized as sportsmanlike) is sometimes penalized for being punched. Roberts (an OTH legend) is not normally penalized for boarding or elbowing a player away from the play. Holmstrom (who is complained about by every coach that has ever lost a game to Detroit) is penalized for goalie interference even when he doesn’t interfere. Draper (a respected participant in Canadian national hockey) isn’t ever penalized for his constant waterskiing or his octopus approach to faceoffs.

Crosby drew, I think, 4 penalties throughout the playoffs. It should have been more but, with his reputation for diving, referees tended to give the defenders the benefit of the doubt. Mike Richards, who dives more than Crosby but doesn’t have that reputation, was getting calls on all the same plays that Crosby wasn’t.

Over the Finals, I thought this more or less evened out. I did, however, feel kind of bad for the Rangers every time I’d see Hal Gill doing his MMA act at one end (unpenalized) only to see Roszival whistled a few shifts later for something that was illegal, but far less blatant than anything that happened on any Gill shift. Rangers’ fans and media (and this National post guy, probably) took things like this to be indicative of institutional bias towards the Penguins. They were wrong. It was simple player bias.

Gill is lucky enough to be one of the big three defenseman who can do no wrong in the eyes of referees (Pronger and Hatcher are the other two). It’s unfair that there is a disconnect between what’s a penalty on a guy like Gill or Pronger (Rafalski isn’t that far behind those two on getting away with holding, btw) and what’s a penalty on a guy like Roszival. It’s something that needs to be addressed.

I also don’t understand how these referees were selected for the finals. It was clear that Watson and Joanette (sp?) were the most inept pair as early as the Philly/Washington series. Devorski wasn’t much better. I would have preferred the Fraser team and the McCreary team, myself. Fraser may be a megalomaniac, but at least he doesn’t look at numbers, and players seem to know exactly what he calls and when. As for McCreary, he seems to completely blow a call a lot less often than anyone else.

Posted by Steve from Pittsburgh on 06/09/08 at 03:05 PM ET