+ Sean Pickett wrote:
+
+ It was a dark, rainy and foggy night.  Actually, it was only
+ foggy inside Conte Forum, as the moist, warm air and cold ice
+ created a fog on the ice for the entire game.  The referees
+ stopped the game about ten times and had the players from both
+ teams skate around to temporarily disperse the fog.  That,
+ combined with the penalties, icings and offsides lead to a
+ 3-hour game.
 
  Maybe it is just me, or just the games that Tony and I have been to,
but it seems as though every time we watch a game at Conte Forum,
something goes wrong.  More often than not, it is simply a
malfunctioning scoreboard.  Once the "game clock" was off by a few
minutes, another time the goals information for the visitor [hmm...]
was non-operational.
 
  On this night, not only did they hold a "public skate" every 10
minutes or so to get rid of the fog on the ice, but in the third
period the scoreboard operator misentered a penalty against Vermont
into the scoreboard.  Granted, this should probably have been caught
by the referees, but it wasn't.
 
  The situation was: Two penalties against Vermont were already on the
board, with one against BC when Vermont had another penalty called
against them.  At the time, there was 1:00 remaining on one of the
two, and 1:11+ (more than 1:11) remaining on the other.  Instead of
changing the 1:00 penalty to 3:00, like they should have, they added a
third penalty to the scoreboard of 2:00.  They then proceeded to play,
with the 2:00 penalty not counting, as the other two counted down.
Inevitably, when the 1:00 penalty ticked off the board, the player who
was listed in that slot skated onto the ice.  9 seconds later the
referees saw 4 Vermont skaters on the ice and whistled them for
"too many men".
 
  Now, once the referees realized what happened, they did the best
they possible could and reset the clock back to when the penalty
expired, as if the clock had stopped at that moment.  No additional
penalties were called on either team, and the play continued at that
point.  But, it was a situation that should never have occured and
resulted in another 10 minutes or so added on to an already long game.
 
 
  So, anyway, you can always be guaranteed an "interesting" game at
Conte Forum no matter what the outcome.  I do hear that except for the
benches being misaligned and the end boards being braced by cement, it
is a nice rink to play in.  :-)
 
adam
ps. I'm sure Tony could have done a better job describing the
BC-Vermont game incidents than I did, but it looks like he's been busy
corrupting our youth [Read: teaching 6th graders] lately.