The 2013 NHL Season Thread

[TalktoChuck]

Ian Cole's game-winning sudden death goal is washed out for goaltender interference. Crowd chants "bullsh-t" and throws garbage on the ice. The Best Fans In Baseball must fly south for the winter.

I don't care for either of those teams, but that shootout was still nerve-racking. Gotta love hockey!

[STL FANATIC]

Blues are slumping hard.

Brian Elliott is who you thought he probably should have been and worse.

And the Blues won that game anyways. Except they didn't. Because the NHL. I hate this league. Too many games are won by the wrong team.

[Still MIGHTY]

And the Blues won that game anyways. Except they didn't. Because the NHL. I hate this league. Too many games are won by the wrong team.

And why do you say that?

The Ducks thoroughly outplayed the Blues in that 2nd for the lead after the Blues outplayed the Ducks in the 1st. I thought that was a entertaining and even game. Huge win to stay on top in the Pacific and comeback after last night's laid egg.

[STL FANATIC]

I say it not because of the way the Blues played. I'd be hard pressed to say the Blues deserved anything after that crap.

I say it because the Blues scored the game winning goal. Waiving it off was a terrible, terrible call.

[Sodboy13]

Looks like at least one Cardinals fan is already in spring training mode!

[The_Admiral]

Too many games are won by the wrong team in hockey. It's an inherently random game that can be made perilously more random by shoddy officiating. Like baseball, but worse. That's why it's important to call a tight game. It seems at times like we're going past tight and into clenched-sphincter. The refs have been unusually trigger-happy so far -- the restraining/obstruction crackdown gets the most attention, but unsportsmanlikes are getting doled out more than I've ever seen. It's like David Stern got sick of writing annual Call Technicals For Bitching edicts that refs stop following, so he just mailed one to Bettman instead.

But hey, a Central team didn't get two points! And the Ducks are fun!

[STL FANATIC]

I don't even know what that means. (To Sodboy)

[STL FANATIC]

Too many games are won by the wrong team in hockey. It's an inherently random game that can be made perilously more random by shoddy officiating. Like baseball, but worse. That's why it's important to call a tight game. It seems at times like we're going past tight and into clenched-sphincter. The refs have been unusually trigger-happy so far -- the restraining/obstruction crackdown gets the most attention, but unsportsmanlikes are getting doled out more than I've ever seen. It's like David Stern got sick of writing annual Call Technicals For Bitching edicts that refs stop following, so he just mailed one to Bettman instead.

I agree with your thesis but not the rest of it.

I think the game suffers when they try and call a tight game. Because they never actually call everything. And that inconsistency will drive every one nuts and ultimately lead to unfair outcomes.

I thought the Blues-Ducks game was officiated EXCELLENTLY for 64+ minutes tonight. I complimented them on Twitter. I never compliment refs on Twitter.

Three penalties were called all night. Some borderline trips and hooks were let go. But they were let go for both sides. They didn't need to be called. The officiating was great.

But then they called a really bad goalie interference (non-penalty) to take away the game-winning goal and ruined the whole thing.

[Sodboy13]

And the Ducks are fun!

This reminds me of the longform piece on Japers Rink earlier this week. After the infamous 7-0 curbstomping at the Garden, Bruce Boudreau apparently decided " it, we're a trap team now," and pretty much signed his own pink slip in the process. It was a knee-jerk reaction to an unsustainably bad run of hockey. It masked the team's deeper problems for a short while, but also neutered Ovechkin in the process, setting his career toward the new coach-new system-every season spiral of doom. So now Boudreau's in Anaheim, and he's turning that team from slogging muckabouts into something actually interesting. Hopefully he learned from his prior mistake.

[The_Admiral]

Too many games are won by the wrong team in hockey. It's an inherently random game that can be made perilously more random by shoddy officiating. Like baseball, but worse. That's why it's important to call a tight game. It seems at times like we're going past tight and into clenched-sphincter. The refs have been unusually trigger-happy so far -- the restraining/obstruction crackdown gets the most attention, but unsportsmanlikes are getting doled out more than I've ever seen. It's like David Stern got sick of writing annual Call Technicals For Bitching edicts that refs stop following, so he just mailed one to Bettman instead.

I agree with your thesis but not the rest of it.

I think the game suffers when they try and call a tight game. Because they never actually call everything. And that inconsistency will drive every one nuts and ultimately lead to unfair outcomes.

Unpenalized obstruction levels the playing field between good teams and bad. What's fair, relative to the talent distribution in a given game, is that a team that hooks, trips, and interferes a lot is penalized for it a lot and made to give up power play goals. Now, obviously, it can never be this simple and this foolproof because there's no guarantee that a high-finesse team can consistently convert power plays (what up, Toews/Kane-era Blackhawks), but removing that kind of noise and static is ultimately more beneficial to the "right team" winning than letting guys do whatever out there.

All this being said, the goalie interference call was pretty ticky-tack, having been conditioned to a league where you can get bulldozed and still not draw the call.

[Still MIGHTY]

I say it not because of the way the Blues played. I'd be hard pressed to say the Blues deserved anything after that crap.

I say it because the Blues scored the game winning goal. Waiving it off was a terrible, terrible call.

You must be joking.

Whoever the hell it was in the crease had his jock up Fasth's nose.

[CS85]

That ref almost ate s**t slipping on that fan sweater. Millions of fans exhale in disappointment.

Meanwhile Schneider wants his mask polished and a few moments to admire it, so we're having a break in the action.

[STL FANATIC]

I would agree with you, but I have two major issues.

1. At the beginning of the season the NHL touted zero tolerance interference. This resulted in offensive players chipping the puck down the boards, making slight contact with the defenseman they had JUST chipped it by and drawing an interference call. That's bad. That's shouldn't be interference. They took it to a really bad level. It wasn't taking away unfair play, it was taking away defense. Thankfully and predictably, the emphasis seemed to last about two weeks.

2. As I said before, when you set out to call everything, you better call everything. Because if you miss it, you're going to screw someone pretty bad. That was happening with the interference I mentioned above. While they claimed to be emphasizing it and making it zero tolerance, they were actually calling it about 1 out of every 5 times. That confuses everyone.

As for the goalie interference, yeah. It was bad. Berglund got pushed into the goaltender. Did the best he could to get off him, but frankly there was nothing he could do. By rule the goal stands. But it didn't.

I say it not because of the way the Blues played. I'd be hard pressed to say the Blues deserved anything after that crap.

I say it because the Blues scored the game winning goal. Waiving it off was a terrible, terrible call.

You must be joking.

Whoever the hell it was in the crease had his jock up Fasth's nose.

Indeed, he did. Beauchemin put him there.

[TalktoChuck]

That goaltender interference call was the right one. They disallowed the goal but didn't call a penalty. Penalty would have been too much because the Blues player was pushed into the crease by the Ducks player. But allowing the goal would have been a bad miss call because said Blues player stayed in the crease and put his arm around the shoulder of Fasth so he could not move.

The real travesty in officiating today was the phantom hand pass on face off, that coast the Predators the OT win in Minnesota.

[STL FANATIC]

If you watch the replay, you'll see Berglund was actually attempting to push off of the crossbar to try and get off of the goaltender. He also kept his hips back from the goaltender the entire time doing whatever he could to minimize contact. There was simply no way for him to reverse his momentum within the span of the second in which the play took place.

[CS85]

Grapes sure taste sour tonight.

[infrared41]

Worst camera angles in the league are Dallas (not steep enough) and Detroit (oh hey back of dudes' heads for the millionth time)

I watched some of the Wings game today before I passed out due to bad hockey and realized I kinda didn't mind the camera angle! Having jerkasses carrying nachos through your line of sight really makes you feel like you're at the game.

Side note of no interest to anyone: My first ever NHL game was at "The Joe" way back in 1983. Bruins - Red Wings.

I have to wonder why the camera positions are such that jerkasses getting into the high game camera shots can't be avoided. My station broadcasts HS football and basketball in venues that were not designed with TV in mind yet we never seem to have that problem. Seems to me that if my little crew can properly position high game cameras, a TV crew that does the NHL should be able to find a way to do it.

Anyway, I'm going to make a point of watching the Red WIngs, Sharks, and Islanders to check out these game camera angles you all speak of.

[The_Admiral]

If you went in '83, it would've been Bruins-Dead Things.

In the case of the Joe, I know that there's no mezzanine/loge between the lower deck and the upper deck; it's just one central concourse from which you go upstairs or downstairs. Nassau is that way as well. Maybe that has something to do with it.

HP Pavilion is a new-ish building but was hastily redesigned mid-construction for major-league hockey, so maybe that affected their camera wells.

[NEW.ERA]

Jim Hughson is trying to make the Canucks seem like a great team, because they're beating Calgary. What's new there? The Canucks are an okay team.

[IceCap]

An ok team with a sitcom goaltender situation.