SoCalSharksGirl

"I'm a Shark out of Water in San Bernardino"

Alta Loma, CA • United States • 32 Years Old • Female

My Rant!!

I don't know about anybody else, but the officiating so far this season has been absolute crap!! I have Center Ice, and I've been to a number of games this season, and it has been absolutely horrendous!! So what's different this season and why am I complaining about it now? Because tonight, there were two critical calls that cost the Sharks the game against Nashville, and ended the home winning streak that the Sharks had been on.

So first up, stupid ref was out of position! In a play where the Sharks top line was crashing the net hard, the Ref was positioned in the corner behind the net opposite the side the puck was on. The puck was still lose, and Thornton hit it into the net a nanosecond after the ref lost site and blew the whistle. No goal. This has happened before I know, but during that play, there were no players behind the net, so there was no reason the stupid ref should be positioned in the corner. Get your but behind the net, or on top of it as I've seen one ref so in the past, so that you are in the appropriate place to see the puck! So there's one blunder!

The second was a combination of bad officiating, and for whatever reason, Toronto not calling down to review the goal. It started on a Nashville rush down the ice, and the puck gets deflected into the air from neutral ice. Everyone loses site of the puck, and when it finally drops, it lands in front of Fidler, and since nobody else knew who to cover, he basically was able to score from all the confusion. Now, my problem with this, is that the entire play was completely off-sides!! The puck was never playable when it entered the zone, and therefore the play should have been called dead. For what ever reason (maybe the refs forgot what their job was), but the play was allowed to go on and the tying goal happened. Why the hell was the play never reviewed?

Aside from those two disallowed/allowed goals there were a number of other penalties that were not called that should have been. Pavelski was blatantly elbowed in the face, causing him to go down. No call. Murray shipped the puck into the offensive zone and was blatantly interfered with as he pursued the puck. No call. I know the Sharks PP has been completely anemic so far this season, and who knows if they would have scored on those PPs, but the fact that they weren't called is what ticks me off! God forbid a player gets his stick parallel to the ice, but they call that every time! And I know that the NHL wants the refs to let the game open up a bit more and be a tad more lenient as to how many penalties they call, but this is absolutely ridiculous. When it starts costing teams games (especially my team when they're on such a streak), they've crossed the line and I'm sick of it!!!

So that's my rant!!

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to leave a comment.