There have been a few posts about the spate of unsportsmanlike
conduct penalties at the end of the Cornell-Brown game, and
to counter the impression that it was a bloodbath lemme add my
.02.
 
Most of those late penalties were the referees attempting to prevent
an incident.  There was the big scuffle behind the net (wherein
Mark Scollan took on a Brown player approximately three times his
height and weight), and that was pretty nasty.  In fact, I remember
thinking "oh great, we're going to go into the Union game with
a DQ".  But the officials did a credible job, and the rest of their
game plan was to award 2 minutes to anything even remotely
confrontational.  Well, in hockey there are *a lot* of things that
can look confrontational, and the zebras were busy.  Ordinarily
you get annoyed with a half dozen stoppages in the final 2 minutes, but
in this case it was easy to see what the refs were trying to do,
and indeed there were no further major scuffles.
 
As much as fans love to complain about officiating, I have seen some
very hard-hitting games these past few weeks and in virtually every
case the officials did an excellent job in letting the players play
hockey but not letting the game out of their control.  That's a tightrope
I'm glad I don't have to walk.
 
 
Greg R. Berge
Let's Go Red!
1995-96 Undefeated Ivy League Champions
 
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