Just wish to clarify this since a few people have asked...
 
At 12:28 AM -0400 1/19/97, Mike Machnik wrote [on INFO-HOCKEY-L]:
> One player for each team (captains, ironically) received a questionable DQ
> for punching during a scrum at 20:00 of the first period and each will miss
> his team's next game.  The players were OSU's Steve Brent and Merrimack's
> John Jakopin.
 
The reason I term the DQ's "questionable" is that there were no punches
thrown.  The penalties were not announced until the beginning of the next
period, and quite a few people were surprised.
 
Jakopin joined us on the air after the second period and confirmed that
neither he nor Brent threw a punch...he also did not feel either should
have been DQ'd.  Of course you'll note that he was one of the players
involved, but he defended both himself and his opponent; and other folks -
from both teams - also thought the call was a bad one.  It seemed that the
choice of DQ's was rather arbitrary, since the players who were DQ'd did
not do anything that was any different than any of the other players did.
Just some pushing and shoving.
 
IMO, if a referee is going to assess a DQ, it had better be for a good
reason.  It has to be deserved.  That was not the case here, and both teams
and players from both teams will suffer with big conference games upcoming.
Merrimack loses its top defenseman and captain, and OSU loses a top penalty
killer and captain.
 
I rarely comment publicly on the officiating, but in this game it was
certainly sub-par.  I have been told that UNH-Lowell on Friday was done by
the same referee.  That game also featured a lot of penalties and some
ejections.  Saturday's UNH-Lowell game had nowhere near as many penalties
(with a different official), as did Friday's OSU-Merrimack game.  So why
did the games done by this referee get ugly while the others, between the
same teams, were much better?  At first I wrote it off, thinking that this
will happen on the second night when two teams play back-to-back, but then
I learned that the same referee did the *first* UNH-Lowell game that also
got chippy while the second one was cleaner.
 
In another incident, a player from one team skated half the length of the
ice, after the whistle had blown, with the apparent intent of running from
behind an opposing player who was facing the other way.  This came at the
tail end of a sequence in which the guilty player had committed two other
infractions (one called on a delay, one apparently not seen).  The player
about to get run from behind heard or saw other players telling him to
watch out and at the last second, he turned around and put up his arms and
stick to defend himself; this knocked the guy who was trying to run him to
the ice.
 
The call was a major for high-sticking on the player who defended himself.
The player who committed three separate infractions on one sequence, was
only assessed the original minor.  Quite odd.
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                [log in to unmask]               *HMM* 11/13/93
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