My take on it is that the league is telling them to call anything that's even close, in the hope that players will learn by the end of the season to avoid everything that might even LOOK like a penalty. It's like they're willing to sacrifice this year in the hope that we'll get clean games without a lot of penalty calls in the future. I think penalties will always be a part of the game, though, and the refs (some of them, not all of them) are going overboard right now -- especially tonight's game vs. Atlanta. BTW brooklynhabfan, where do you live in Brooklyn? I used to live in the Eagle Warehouse building next to the bridge before I fled NYC...

Tonight's game was beyond ridiculous.....do they want a rec hockey league or the National Hockey League.  Atlanta had what 13 penalties and maybe 5 of them are what most would consider an obstruction or foul.....and it went both ways.  Until overtime, there was no flow to this game.  Was there even a hit tonight......I didn't see anything worth recalling.  I like the clamp down and allowing skill players to be skill players but gosh they're not atoms on the ice.   These two officials should both be evaluated for tonight's performance because they BOTH got a failing grade.   Oh, they were consistent though.....consistently brutal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gary- agreed. One word for these guys. PATHETIC. (I was disappointed in a good old Hampton boy like Chris Lee turning in a performance like that). I got the impression the 2 of them were like "Look Mom I am on TV!!!". Some officials need to be told that the fans do not pay good money to watch them officiate. Were some goals legitimate? Of course they were. Ryder had 2 calls against him that were text book. Michael you cannot take your hand off your stick and grab a guy around the shoulders!!! Bonk, same thing. I shudder to think how many penalties Souray would have had last night. Actually I am shocked that Lee did not call Sheldon for obstructing the flow of his hotdog with a beer in the press box.

But the calls I have a problem with are the simple touching a guy with a blade of your stick. When you tap a player on the ass, or hip, or hit his stick with your stick, you are in no way obstructing him or hooking him. You need to be able to let the guy know you are there. A hook is simply that. Taking your stick and hooking it around, under, or beneath a part of the player's body to impeded his progress. But tapping the guy on the hip with the blade of it??

These idiots took ALL flow out of the game last night and it was horrible to watch. John M commented that we "barely beat a terrible team last night". One needs to ask why? We have a fast team that was not allowed to play last night. Koivu was a non factor last night. Why? Because he spent most of the night on the bench so that Bonk could kill off penalties.

 

Hey what about that Viagra guy or whatever his name was for Atlanta..he was in tghe box serving so many minors that I fully expect his Visa bill to be delivered there today