Sidney Crosby referee ‘huddle’ and whether NHL officials should overturn calls
Sidney Crosby didn’t trip Johnny Oduya on Sunday. His stick was inadvertently caught in the Chicago Blackhawks defenseman’s skates, sending him to the ice.
But Crosby was whistled for a penalty, and he complained about it as the Pittsburgh Penguins’ bench did as well, which led to an odd but not unprecedented sight: All four on-ice officials holding a conference at center ice, discussing the penalty.
“Are they going to pick up the flag on this?” wondered Ed Olczyk on NBC.
Suddenly, about a minute after Crosby was seated in the sin bin, he was paroled, smirking as he skated to the Pittsburgh bench. Jonathan Toews listened incredulously to an explanation as fans booed. Brad Watson, the referee, explained to both benches that he “wanted to get the call right.”
Which is, at the end of the day, all we ask about those officials: Just get the call right.
It’s the basic expectation for them. It’s the argument many of us make for expanding video reviews. If you make a mistake, have a means through which to rectify it.
Which is what they did with Crosby, and what they’ve done in similar situations with other players recently. Kerry Fraser of TSN, in a moment of expected egomania, claims his suggestion that more referees conference with each other is the reason we’ve seen it happen more often this season:
My good friend Mike 'Doc' Emrick correctly cited an incorrect penalty call that had a profound effect in a Detroit-Washington game on October 29. The trailing referee, positioned near the center red line, incorrectly whistled Luke Glendening of the Wings for goalie interference when Braden Holtby fell while skating backwards in return to his goal crease. The phantom penalty call also negated a Wings goal scored by Drew Miller. C'mon Ref addressed the play the next day in detail and even provided suggestions to my referee fraternity as to a conference of officials that should have taken place to reverse this obvious error and get the call right.
Well it didn't take long for the refs to implement those suggestions as protocol. That very night (October 30), the LA Kings were in Pittsburgh and Jarett Stoll was signaled for a penalty by referee Greg Kimmerly for 'apparently' tripping Brandon Sutter. In reality, Sutter got his feet tangled up and fell in close proximity to Stoll, who protested his innocence from his seat in the penalty box as Crosby did Sunday. The other referee in that game, Steve Kozari, approached Kimmerly and following a brief conversation, Stoll was released from the penalty box without charge! The correct call was ultimately arrived at through the conference of officials that took place in both of these situations.
Here’s where the human element of officiating collides with our desire to see games called without flaws. There are penalties in every game that can be termed “phantom calls,” ones that would be undoubtedly overturned if given a second glance by the officials. We come to expect blown calls. Like ice, pucks and dental bills, it’s a part of hockey.
But if the “protocol” is now having on-ice officials reconsider some of these calls as a player is literally seated in the penalty box … well, it’s going to add an extra layer of agitation when calls that aren’t made aren’t given that consideration.
Like after Monday night’s insanely fun 6-5 win for the New York Rangers over the New York Islanders. According to Arthur Staple of Newsday, Travis Hamonic of the Islanders wanted to know where his huddle was after an accidental trip on Mats Zuccarello. Derek Stepan of the New York Rangers wondered the same thing about his hooking call on Nikolay Kulemin.
John Tavares of the Islanders thought the refs blew a call on Johnny Boychuk getting tripped to spring Marty St. Louis for a key third period goal. "I don't know how you think Boychuk just falls down… They talk about wanting to get the call right and they don't talk about it,” he said.
So that’s what happens when the referees conference during an nationally televised game and take the most famous player in the world out of the penalty box after a blown call. Everyone else wonders why their game, their players, their penalties aren’t given the same levels of scrutiny.
I’m torn on these conferences. Part of me wants blown calls to exist in nature, if only to avoid the whiff of favoritism that comes from giving certain penalties lengthy analysis over others.
But most of me wants them to overturn bad calls by any means necessary. It’s not as if any of us can argue for, say, video review of blown high-sticking penalties and then kvetch about four zebras talking over a bad tripping penalty for a minute.
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