2018-19 NHL thread

This is a good point - while Rule 67 says that in the opinion of the referee it must have been "deliberately directed" to a teammate for play to stop, which I guess some Sharks fans are latching on to, my sense from all the hockey I've watched over the years is that the deliberately directed language is rarely if ever applied, and that if the team of the player who touched it with his hand gains possession they stop play regardless of intent.

While I tire of ref-bashing, mostly because the parts that aren't conspiracy-based seem premised on the odd idea that there are much better refs out there that leagues for some reason won't hire, I really do wonder how they could have missed that call. I wondered aloud about it to my son before Karlsson even had the puck in the net.

 

The bullshit that my Sharks fans friends are clinging to is that language of "deliberately directed" or that it grazed off the shin of Bouwmeester or that it glanced off of Timo's stick after the hand pass or (and this one is my favorite so far) it hit off of Timo's wrist so there for it wasn't his hand for a hand pass. All of this is to some how absolve the refs for missing the call because had they seen it, they would have seen all this other bullshit. The fact is the refs didn't see it or didn't want to see it. There was none of that calculus going on. I really want to post the "back and to the left" memes on my friends' Facebooks but I really don't feel like picking that fight.

 

The deliberately directed thing is nonsense. Hand passes are called multiple times in every game. I think the deliberately is implied when a player deliberately uses his hand, whether he deliberately passed it to a player or not. And any time a player uses his hand almost 100 percent of the time he is deliberately using it. Plus, if you watch that play, it was a pretty good pass, no? For a play that is called so often it's amazing it didn't get called there and it clearly set the Sharks up for a goal. A winning OT goal.

I'm not one for sports conspiracies but you see the benefit the Sharks have gotten on key plays three times now and you know why people have them. The same team, three big times, all in the playoffs, twice in Game 7s and once in OT. It's pretty crazy. I just think officiating is generally poor, and I guess good for the Sharks for being on the right side of those calls, but man it has to be called better. Especially the obvious ones like the major and the hand pass.

 

Ray Ratto: https://deadspin.com/is-there-anything-fishy-about-the-sharks-1834815982

 

I take back my doubt about a hand pass, seems clearly a hand pass by everyone else.

What I don’t get is all the supposed favoritism towards Sharks. Everyone expects perfection from officiating when nothing else in life is perfect. It’s human error.

You want perfect? Watch an atomic clock in the museum, a mechanical piano.


Sport is defined by human error. If hockey were perfect every pass would be on the tape, every shot in back of net. It’s not. Accept that’s why we watch.

 

Yeah, the idea that there is a league-wide conspiracy to fix things for fucking San Jose is the galling part.

 

For sure. As wild as anything I've heard in the NBA.

 

Of course they are not, they are just getting as much luck as any team I can remember.

 

Yeah, precisely. I can't imagine anyone trying to fix the results to go in San Jose's favor, of all things. I just think the officiating has been piss poor across the board throughout these playoffs. I don't know if the game has gotten too fast or what, but there have been so many blown and missed calls. Have read a few think pieces today about potential fixes, including putting an official in the press box for a sky view of everything happening on the ice. Not sure that's the answer, as you're not going to see any of the hand-to-hand combat -- so to speak -- from that far away. But being able to review things like hand passes would be a start? If we can review kicked pucks and high sticks around the net, why not that?

 

Just review every goal and every major.

 

And that second goal was the Martin Jones we've come to know and loathe.

 

No Karlson or Pavelski to start the third, and then a 5-on-3. San Jose may have finally hit the wall.