Bill Fenwick writes:
 
>Tom's pet peeve is also mine, i.e. penalties in the first period (or in this
>case, the first two) are not called in the third, in part because the
>officials
>"don't want to decide the game".  Well, couldn't an UNCALLED penalty that sets
>up a scoring chance decide the game??
>
>Noeth is not the only official in college hockey that does this; in fact, I
>would wager that most of them do.  But despite the penalty calls and
>non-calls,
>I didn't think that he over-controlled the game.  Adam Wodon opines that Noeth
>is the best ref in the ECAC, and if Rob Hearn isn't doing games anymore
>(is he?
> I don't know), then I would probably have to agree.  Think about it, ECAC
>fans
>-- who would you have rather seen doing this game?  Bill Doiron??  John
>Murphy,
>maybe?
>
>Which brings up a question I have.  Clearly, in an NCAA tournament game
>between
>teams from different leagues, you can't use officials from either league.  For
>example, a CCHA ref or a Hockey East ref could not have done the UNH-MSU semi.
> But for an all-Hockey-East championship game (or for that matter, the
>all-Hockey-East semi between Maine and BC), why didn't they have Hockey East
>officials, who would at the very least have been somewhat familiar with the
>styles of both teams?  As I recall, Frank Cole, who was largely a Hockey East
>ref at the time, did the '95 final between Maine and BU.
 
Frank Cole, who is now director of officiating for the ECAC, is a friend
and insurance client of mine (we're from the same home town) and happened
to be on the same shuttle bus when we dropped off our rental cars on
Sunday.  I asked him this very question, "if it was OK for you to ref the
NCAA final between two Hockey East teams in 1995, why did it not happen
this year?"  My reasoning is that it is better to have someone reffing the
game who knows the players, knows the coaches, knows what to look for
rather than having some guy (like Noeth) who may have reffed one game for
one team.  Frank explained to me that the NCAA decided for this tournament
that they would go with officials from the two conferences not involved in
the Frozen Four (ECAC and WCHA).  The reasoning, of course, was that if a
MSU-BC/Maine matchup happened you could not have the game done by a ref
from either the CCHA or HE.  Thus, no HE officials were on site.
 
The kicker to me, however, is that he felt if the same scenario had
occurred in an eastern venue - Boston, Providence, Albany - that there is
no question that the NCAA would have brought in a HE official to do the
game.  He was basically saying that the NCAA did not want to spring for the
money to fly someone out to do one game.  Nice, eh?
 
If Noeth is the best official in the ECAC, thank god UNH is not in that
league.  We had Doiron in the Governors Cup (vs. Maine) last November and
he was awful.    Noeth called too many ticky-tacky penalties in the first
period, followed it up with some pretty inconsistent reffing in the second
and then swallowed his whistle in the third.  Now, I don't mind if a guy
wants to take control of the game by calling some stuff early on.  The
theory behind this is it gives the teams the message that you are here to
play hockey, not commit mayhem.  In a situation like that, if the teams
ignore the implicit advice, the ref should continue to call penalties until
things calm down.  The key is to be consistent.  Noeth was not.  A
championship game deserves the top official and he was not it.
 
I think, overall, it would have been better if he had let the teams just
play.  There is no question in my mind that the disjointed flow of the game
- penalties, commercials, etc. - worked to Maine's advantage.  In a
five-on-five game UNH has more depth and probably would have had the
advantage in the third period.  Of course, Michaud was playing out of his
mind so it might not have made any difference.
 
Greg Ambrose
GO UNH BLUE!!!
 
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