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NHL

Blue Jackets Not Happy With Late Call

Posted Apr 24, 2009 12:10PM By Bruce Ciskie (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Blue Jackets, Red Wings, Western

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Johan Franzen's power-play goal ended Columbus' season Thursday night, and the Blue Jackets aren't taking it very well.

The penalty that gave the Red Wings a late power play happened with 94 seconds left in regulation. Fredrik Modin didn't wait long enough to play a puck as he came off the bench, catching his team with six players on the ice thanks to a slow change. After a rough-and-tumble first 18:30 of the third period, the call didn't sit well with Columbus.

You hear a lot of questions regarding the timing of calls by officials. In this case, the Blue Jackets only have a semantic case. After all, it was clear they had six players on the ice while they were touching the puck. Jakob Voracek was simply too slow to get to the bench after getting caught in a long shift. The tendency for players at the end of long shifts to slowly leave the ice is a big part of why coaches bang on the white board and beg their guys to keep the shifts short, especially late in close playoff games. Voracek was guilty. He spent too much time on the ice, couldn't get off of it quickly enough, and Modin didn't time his touch of the puck to correspond with Voracek at least hopping over the boards.

Michael Arace covered the game for the Columbus Dispatch and found out what some of the players, along with coach Ken Hitchcock, thought about the decision to call the penalty.
"To lose an elimination game, when there were no holds barred, on a call by a linesman . . . It's just not right," defenseman Mike Commodore said.

... Michael Peca, among others, voiced this sentiment: "Don't put the game on the line for THAT. Especially when the guys in charge of calling the game (the referees) have put away their whistles."

... "By the rule book it's probably the right call," Hitchcock said. "By the circumstances of the game, I didn't like it at all."
Honestly, they have a point.

Listen, I'll bang the "A penalty's a penalty" drum until it breaks. I truly have believed in this philosophy for many years, and will continue to in the future.

The fact of the matter is that the NHL doesn't believe in it. They never have, and they probably never will.

Steven Walkom talks a good game, but the actions of his officials over the years makes it clear that they only call penalties when they feel like it. A hook in the first period is not a hook in the third period. It suddenly morphs into a clean defensive play. Numerous penalties could have been called in the third period of Thursday's game. Much of it was stuff that had already been called. When it happens again after it's been called once or twice, it shouldn't be ignored.

Especially when you're going to nail a team for too many men when it's not a willful and blatant violation of the rules. As I mentioned after the game, it's a rule that has been enforced with maddening inconsistency during these playoffs, and it's not that hard to call.

In the end, the better team won, we all gained a little respect for the scrappy bunch from Ohio, and we learned that not much has changed from last year to this year in terms of the officiating. They'll continue to be a topic throughout these playoffs.

Tags: 2009+stanley+cup+playoffs, 2009StanleyCupPlayoffs, fredrik+modin, FredrikModin, jakob+voracek, JakobVoracek, johan+franzen, JohanFranzen, ken+hitchcock, KenHitchcock

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