Steve Moerland writes:
>   As to who it benefits more, it's awfully close. In an inter-regional game,
>a slight advantage, IMO, goes to the team that shares the official's region.
>In a game, to use your example, between Minnesota and RPI I think that Minn.
>would be hurt a bit more by an HE or ECAC official than RPI would be by a
>western official.  On the one hand, in a game with an eastern ref Minnesota
>would have to tone down their game, and would be likely to take more penalties.
 
I find the talk about Western vs Eastern officiating interesting,
because we see large differences just within the East - between the
ECAC and HE.
 
The second ECAC quarterfinal game between Harvard and RPI surprised
those of us who follow HE, because the game was filled with
"incidents" that we believed would have been called by HE officials
but were let go by the ECAC officials working the game.  This was also
the case in the four RPI Invitational games I saw, which were all
worked by ECAC crews.
 
It appears that a HE crew will do the RPI-Minnesota game, and I
suspect it will be the top crew from HE of Cole-Gravellese-Jones.  I
think you can expect them to be rather consistent in their
play-calling, and a way in which RPI will have to adjust is that they
won't be able to get away with the kind of stuff that they and Harvard
got away with in that game I refer to.
 
A game worked by Frank Cole tends to be one in which the teams are
allowed to play.  Some referees always call things tightly, but Cole
seems to be a supporter of clean physical hockey (emphasis on clean).
He'll let go a lot of incidental stuff, on both sides, as long as the
game stays under control.  But if things get out of hand, you may
suddenly see a lot of trips to the box by both teams.
 
I think I have seen enough of Cole et al to say that the way the game
is called will be dictated by how the teams play.  If things get a bit
chippy and a lot of calls are made, I won't be surprised to hear some
HOCKEY-Lers jump all over them, but in these cases it is often the
teams' style of play that leads to penalties being called.
 
A good example, I thought, was the HE final.  I felt more penalties
were called against PC because of the huge difference in styles
between PC and BU.  PC had to play a close-checking game to contain
BU, often punctuated by situations where they had to take liberties to
prevent the quicker and more skilled Terriers from breaking it open.
 
I've only seen Minnesota on tv once and RPI live about 4 times.  From
that, it seems to me that Minnesota has the more skilled forwards, and
RPI might have to take a penalty here and there to keep up with them.
RPI's defense, while it has improved greatly throughout the season, is
still somewhat inexperienced, and this often leads to bad penalties
too.  I believe RPI will have to play a smart positional game to have
a chance, while the Gophers will try to open it up and dare RPI to
stay with them.
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                                            [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                    *HMM* 11/13/93