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 HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.