Poor calls in Canadiens-Rangers recreation reinforce want for officers to face media

NEW YORK — The post-game press convention lasted 1:10 and consisted of six questions that had been all responded to with a variation of the identical reply from Montreal Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis.

“I loved our game, but I’m not going to talk about the refs,” he mentioned over and over after the Canadiens misplaced 4-3 to the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Saturday.

It didn’t matter if St. Louis was being requested about his group’s efficiency, or in regards to the undebatable penalty Kirby Dach took for high-sticking with 2:40 to go and with the rating knotted at 3-3, he caught to his mantra.

“Like I said, I loved everything about our game,” St. Louis repeated, “but I’m not going to talk about the refs.”

Kelly Sutherland and Francis Charron — two of the league’s most tenured and embellished officers, with 2,271 regular-season video games of expertise and 12 Stanley Cup Final appearances between them — ended up making the distinction in one of the crucial evenly performed video games of the season, leaving St. Louis and the Canadiens with each purpose to be as pissed off as they appeared when all was mentioned and performed.

He, and so they, couldn’t speak about it with out being fined by the NHL. So they selected to not.

But the officers themselves needs to be compelled to speak about it.

Not simply these ones on at the present time, however all officers needs to be compelled to talk in any case video games on this league.

If not them, the supervisors overseeing every recreation needs to be made out there to the press to offer clarifications, justifications, or maybe only a smidgen of accountability for when the job is botched on the extent it was in Saturday’s recreation.

There had been a number of missed calls, and there have been too many calls made that had been fully inexplicable.

And within the void left by the NHL’s refusal to have anybody reply for it, we’re left to go together with our personal interpretations of what occurred.

In our view, the misses went each methods, however there have been extra of them favouring the Rangers than the Canadiens.

Canadiens defenceman Arber Xhekaj threw a late hit on Alexis Lafreniere within the second interval, and he fully missed together with his shoulder and ended up clipping Lafreniere’s knee. It ought to’ve been a penalty on Xhekaj, however he escaped punishment whereas Sam Carrick went to serve two minutes for attempting — and failing — to have interaction Xhekaj in a struggle.

But Sutherland and Charron missed a crosscheck from New York’s Chris Kreider on Josh Anderson in the identical body and their largest miss of the afternoon got here on the play that ended up successful the sport for the Rangers.

“I think I got tripped,” mentioned Joel Armia.

Everyone within the constructing noticed that he obtained tripped by Will Cuylle, who then made his approach unimpeded to Montreal’s internet to arrange the deciding purpose for Kappo Kakko with 24 seconds to play.

But by some means, Sutherland and Charron both fully missed it or determined to let it go.

If it was the latter, it was certainly one of a number of curious choices they made on this recreation.

One of the extra egregious ones was the roughing penalty to Anderson, which was assessed within the 17^th minute of the second interval — or a number of minutes after he complained to the officers for lacking the cross-check he took from Kreider.

Mika Zibanejad put the Rangers up 3-1 simply 49 seconds later.

And then, within the 19^th minute of the second interval, got here probably the most bizarrely sorted state of affairs of the sport. Kirby Dach pushed Zibanejad into Rangers goaltender Jonathan Quick and Quick got here up swinging, resulting in an 11-player melee.

It took Sutherland and Charron roughly 10 minutes to determine who to penalize earlier than sending three gamers from both sides to the field — none of them being Dach — and (seemingly) arbitrarily deciding the Rangers ought to get an influence play out of it.

They gave Juraj Slafkovsky two penalties for roughing on the sequence however left everybody within the constructing guessing as to how the Rangers got here out of all of it with a five-on-four benefit.

NHL protocol is for one of many two officers to make use of the microphones they’re sporting to announce the penalties they’re handing out to the gang, however neither official did that after the absurdly lengthy delay, and confusion ensued, with the league’s web site studying the double-minor was being given to Xhekaj earlier than it was ultimately accurately attributed to Slafkovsky.

The complete factor was a mockery, and there was no person round to elucidate afterwards.

St. Louis was actually going to be requested about it, however he didn’t even watch for a query about officiating earlier than saying — and repeating a number of occasions — he liked the way in which the Canadiens performed and wasn’t going to speak in regards to the officiating.

The Canadiens’ effort was sturdy from begin to end, with Anderson setting the tone by touchdown a decisive win over Jacob Trouba in a first-period struggle. They fought again laborious to tie the sport 3-3 within the third interval, with objectives from Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki placing them in place to not less than earn some extent within the standings.

St. Louis may not have liked the penalty Dach took on Zibanejad, which got here from behind the Rangers internet.

But he positively hated that Armia had no likelihood of recovering from Cuylle’s journey on time to disclaim Kakko the successful purpose.

The massive Finnish winger mentioned he requested for an evidence from the officers, after which mentioned, “I didn’t get much of an answer.”

We by no means get any solutions from them, which is one thing the NHL ought to change.

The NFL makes officers out there to a pool reporter, who gathers questions and asks them on behalf of the press. Major League Baseball does the identical.

It’s all performed with the understanding that officers are human, and that they’re by no means going to name an ideal recreation.

But not less than they’re given the possibility to personal it after they name one poorly.

This recreation, which noticed each groups go toe-to-toe all afternoon, was referred to as terribly, and St. Louis mentioned what he needed to say about that with out saying something in any respect.