----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Peterson" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, March 24, 2002 3:54 PM
Subject: Unusual Calls at Western Regionals


> One of the linesman had a habit of yapping at the players and not
> dropping the puck.  It got pretty irritating for everyone in the arena.
> Apparently, one pair of players just weren't able to deal with it anymore.
> One got called for slashing and another for delay of game.  How do you
> get called for a delay of game when you're in the circle trying to face
off?
> The next period that linesman started dropping the puck quicker.  I
> wonder if someone talked to him between periods.  Of course, just to
> make this game that much more interesting, there was also the tossing
> out of the mascot.

The crowd was going berserk, but a large part of the problem was that John
Shouneyia for Michigan and every center St. Cloud had simply refused to line
up legally all night long.  Bernard, the AR, kept trying to jaw with them
about it, when I thought he should have simply started tossing people out
quickly, and then calling Delay of Game if the second centerman persisted.
I think that it's the sort of thing you'd only have to do once and people
would get the message.  Unfortunately for that, the only time he called it
was the Delay of Game on St. Cloud on the same faceoff when Shouneyia
clipped the Huskie center in the face with his stick, so the deterrent
effect was lost.

> The same crew officiated the Denver - Michigan game.

No, it wasn't.  The assistant refs were the same, but it was a different
head ref.  The Michigan-St. Cloud game had a guy named Hansen, the
Michigan-Denver game had Gravalese, who did the early game on Friday.

>The most
> interesting call was when a puck flipped up high in the air.  A Michigan
> player caught the puck in the air and in one motion launched it down the
> ice.  He was at his blueline and the puck landed near the other blueline.
> Although it was one motion, it was a catch & throw and not just a batting
> of the puck.  He was pretty surprised when he found out he couldn't do
> that.  I figured he had been called for an illegal forward pass, but more
> accurately it is that you can't throw the puck.

Of note, that was the second time Michigan had done the same thing while
killing a penalty.  In the first period, John Shouneyia grabbed the puck out
of the air right in front of the net and threw it into the corner.  In the
first instance, it only produced a whistle and a faceoff, but Gravalese
didn't let them get away with it a second time.  And Komisarek got really
good distance on the one he went to the box for, so no one should complain
that it wasn't really obvious.
>
> There was one other play that only the officials know what went on.  They
> stopped play and one official went to the phone.  He spent more time on
> the phone for this one than the waved off goal from the previous day.
> Nothing seemed to come from it.  Maybe it was a pizza order.  It was
> pretty loud in the arena at the time so I'm sure he would have had to
> repeat it.

Which time?  Gravalese obviously really likes talking to the guys at the
scorers' table.  It generally had to do with how much time should be left on
the clock, but how it can take him five minutes to decide to put 4 second
back on is beyond me.

J. Michael Neal