EDMONTON - Restraint is just not an element of Taylor Hall's game, so there are times when the Edmonton Oilers winger inevitably deviates from the high road.
Sometimes he just has to share his frustration with the officiating crews.
But as Hall, sophomore centre Jordan Eberle and rookie centre Ryan Nugent-Hopkins have discovered, there are dues to be paid when it comes to winning over the referees. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/sports/hockey/edmonton-oilers/Hall+young+teammates+know+they+have+their+dues+garner+more+respect/6237340/story.html
Shacks' Take: Anyone who's watched hockey for the last few months has noticed the clutching and grabbing is back and as bad as ever. Two of the best offensive teams in the league, Vancouver and Edmonton, are lamenting the lack of penalty calls and it doesn't seem like a coincidence to me. Fortunately for Vancouver, they're equally well built to win a 1 – 0 game as a 6 – 5 game but unfortunately for Oiler fans they're not. You wonder if this is the way the league is going since it allows even more parity and more teams to compete for playoff spots longer. The league may prefer parity to actual entertaining hockey since the evil lord Bettman and his henchmen likely view tight playoff races as the better way to sell the sport to a broader market.
I honestly hope that's not the case because we're left with an inferior product on the ice. And I don't see how these dead-puck-era-like games are going to attract new fans or spectators seeing as many diehard hockey fans are starting to complain about all the clutching and grabbing going on. I love watching hockey but I find myself tuning into less and less out-of-market games because there just seem to be more and more unappealing matchups ( St. Louis vs. Naszzz.....).
ReplyDeleteOther than the entertainment value taking a nosedive, it harms the integrity of the league. The NHL should be striving for a fairness and consistency, but it seems like they are failing to achieve either by letting all this hooking and holding go. At the beginning of the year the offensive talent of teams like the Oilers and the Canucks were on display, thanks in large part to the higher number of penalties awarded). Now, it's become increasingly difficult to discern what is and isn't a penalty because there are so many illegal obstruction plays undetected/ uncalled by refs. This is neither consistent nor fair because the NHL officially mandated a crackdown on obstruction after the lockout, consequently, teams will build for a game where there is more wide open ice, and those teams found success early on this season ( ie. Oilers, Leafs). Unfortunately we've crept back, no taken a huge leap backwards, where players are tackled to the ice with no consequence to the perpetrator when a ref would not have hesitated to call that a penalty early in the season. I think Mike Gillis saw this developing and realized that an offensively gifted but defensively shaky player like Hodgson was going to be smothered by this return to something resembling the dead puck era. Thankfully, as a fan of the Canucks they've been able to withstand this inconsistency and have managed to flourish in spite of it. Though I'm afraid of what teams like St. Louis or Nashville will manage to get away with, in terms of what should be illegal obstruction, in the playoffs if all this is being let go of in the regular season. However, if I were an Oilers or Maple Leafs fan I would be seriously pissed at this massive inconsistency in the NHL. And as a hockey fan I'm quickly becoming uninterested in games that don't feature the Canucks ( and games that do feature the Canucks are starting to lose their appeal as well, but I know I'll stick those out). Call me crazy, but I'd rather watch a league where offensive talents like the Sedins, Giroux and Karlsson succeed; as opposed to watching Mike Fisher or Paul Gaustad grind it out.
I can't disagree with anything you say, amen brother.
ReplyDelete