Friday night: Minnesota squeaks out an OT win over DU. Saturday night: Minnesota loses after only putting in 10 minutes of effort in a 60 minute game. Denver earned the win. Those are the facts. This doesn't change the fact that the officiating for the weekend was plain awful. Much worse on Saturday night however. I am not one of those fans who believes it's okay to "let them play", that is how people get hurt. What is a penalty at one end should be a penalty at the other end, period. I have never seen so much broken lumber during two games as I did this weekend. Most of it was broken over legs, arms and backs. A sad and sorry sight I assure you...that to me is NOT hockey. One other thing that was only mentioned in passing....for a Ref who likes to "let them play" what on earth was Schmitt THINKING when he decided to call a penalty with 1.4 SECONDS left in the game on Saturday night???? This resulted in total chaos on the ice and a total of 12 minutes of roughing to DU and a 5-minute major for fighting with a DQ and for MN a total of 16 minutes of roughing, 2 minutes for holding, and a 5-minute major for fighting with a DQ. This also delayed the end of the game for at least 5-10 minutes while they sorted this whole disaster out. The fighting majors were deserved, both Buzan and Lyons threw punches at each other. There were others throwing punches on the ice, but don't get me started on THAT! We were supposed to have Buzz Christensen as a ref this weekend, but he was called at the last minute to go up to Houghton for the ref who was assigned but due to weather couldn't get there. Perhaps the head of officials Greg Shephard was at the Saturday night Gopher game to observe his refs...I thought I saw him in the press box. A point I would really like to make, and it was shouted out from several people in my section at this crew: why don't those "assistant" referees ever call a blatant penalty that occurs right under their nose???? At least twice this weekend, this happened at my end of the rink and Campion and D.Shepard didn't even blink! If they are not gonna call the "behind the play" penalties, then let's call them what they really are: LINESMEN and nothing more. period. And, I am concerned about the Gophers lackluster performance. If the Gophers had played up to their potential these two games would have been absolute barn-burners. Denver is a very BIG and talented team. Just once, I'd like to see a series without all that broken lumber, nasty hits, clutching, grabbing and rotten officiating. Boy, now THAT would be a great hockey game. ...sigh -Carol GO Gophers!!! HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.