Walt Olson wrote:
>
>Excellent synopsis. I listened to the game up here in Houghton. About the
>only thing that I would add is that there were far to many penalties: CC
>had 12 powerplays and MTU had 6. CC has an outstanding powerplay; thus
>every penalty taken by MTU gave CC a chance to break the game wide open
>and they did this in the 2nd period. The game did not have much flow.
>Apparenty, Thmoas and Rutherford (the ref's) are renting their whistles
>and need to get everything they can from them before returning.
 
I didn't see or listen to this game, so all of my comments are general
rather than specific to it.  It appears that Walt has never seen a play on
which he thought a penalty should be called, at least from the tenor of his
posts.  I'd just like a chance to speak for the middle on this one.
(Standing between Walt and Luiz Valente.  Someone should warn me if that's
a dangerous place to be.)  The refs are given a rulebook to enforce; it
includes not only penalties for endangering people's safety, but also such
things as interference, holding and hooking.  They would be derelict in
their duties to not call these infractions.  It is certainly possible to go
to far in the other direction, witness the Wisconsin-Lake State NCAA final
in Albany a couple of years ago.  Nevertheless, the game would be dull
without these obstruction penalties being called.  The top scorers get held
up quite enough as it is.
  One phrase that bugs me is, "the refs stood back and let the players
decide the game themselves."  The officials have just as big an impact on
the outcome of the game if they call too few penalties as they do calling
too many.  There's no such thing as letting the players decide the game
themselves.  A referee's presence or lack thereof is integral to the play
of the game.  Last year's Maine-Michigan semi-final shows this.  Greg
Shepard obviously decided that he wasn't going to call anything in
overtime.  Michigan controlled the early portion of the overtime and lost
several scoring chances to obstruction.  I'm not saying Shepard was biased;
Michigan got away with their own infractions as time wore on.  But to say
that Shepard didn't have a direct influence in the outcome is just wrong.
Worse, the chippiness escalated as the game went on and on (anybody else
remember Turco decking a Maine player to the side of the net.)  But given
what had been let go, Shepard couldn't call anything.
  As to the specific game referred to in the header, as I said, I didn't
see it.  But I don't find it at all beyond reason that it was well
officiated.  CC can really start to run by teams, who will be inclined to
take penalties to try to slow them down.  Throw in Tech's habits of taking
bad penalties, this could obviously get them in trouble and it sounds like
it did yesterday afternoon.  Frankly, I've watched Tech play and I'm not
inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
 
J. Michael Jackson
 
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