Feel Good Story Of The Day

Per Stan Fischler: "The NHL’s officiating corps will suffer a three-way blow at the end of the season. Kerry Fraser, Don Koharski and Ron [sic] Schick all are calling it a career. And that may not be all." Bill McCreary? Please?

Oh, and I can't wait to see what kind of traffic I get now that I've published the phrase "three-way blow."

Sometimes Karma's A Female Dog

For more schadenfreudian goodness, make sure to stop by The 700 Level, and if mainstream media whining is more your thing, the Philadelphia Daily News has you covered.

Moron, Err, More On Chris Rooney

Look, I hate whining about officiating (most of the time) - if a team puts itself in a position where a referee can decide the game, they often deserve what they get. I prefer holding players culpable for giving the stripes the opportunity to make the horrendous calls they so often make, so I'll leave the full-on ref bashing to others.

But I will point out that this isn't the first time this season that one of today's referees, Boston's own Chris Rooney, has, for lack of a better term, screwed the pooch (which shouldn't be surprising, considering that he has been calling regular season games since 2000 and, based on his performance, has gotten a chance to officiate all of three playoff games). A brief look at his 2007-08 greatest hits:

• December 11 - Rooney and Bill McCreary let things get way out of hand in a Pens/Flyers game.
  
• February 4 - Rooney's whistle is... somewhere other than in his mouth, allowing Phoenix to score in overtime to beat Colorado. "It was a ridiculous non-call and I'm upset," said Avs coach Joel Quenneville.
• February 10 - Rooney and partner Dan O'Halloran repeatedly botch the Avs/Wings game.
• March 8 - Today's game. Ugh.
  

As for Rooney's roots - he grew up in Beantown and "watch[ed] the Bruins all [his] life" - one of the more notable moments in his career came when he threw former Bruin Joe Thornton out of a game for checking-from-the-side... against then-Bruin Hal Gill... in Boston. Apparently "[e]veryone, including the league, later agreed referee Chris Rooney over-reacted."

Finally, while this next quote is a little older, it's classic Ron Wilson, so it gets included:

"No practice tomorrow -- what we'll do is maybe call a practice and practice our diving. I'm dead serious. Chris Rooney calls a penalty on us on an obvious dive from Paul Kariya, so if anything, it should cost Paul Kariya $1,000 [in a fine for diving] to win the hockey game. [The NHL] put out a memo on dives and divers, and he's right at the top of the list for taking dives. ... Plain and simple, that's a dive."

So that's a bit of the Rooney file. Take it for what it's worth... maybe more than he's worth as a referee.

Raise Your Hand If You're A Douche Bag

Thanks, Bill.

h/t Paul Kukla for the clip.

Kerry Is So Very… Not Making The Playoff Cut

When the Stanley Cup Playoffs get underway later this week, they'll do so without the League's longest-serving referee, Kerry Fraser (and his hair). While twenty of Fraser's 33 full-time NHL referee colleagues made the cut, Kerry (who officiated only four games in the 2006 Playoffs) did not. In essence, Kerry Fraser is the Montreal Canadiens of NHL referees -- tons of playoff games through the years, a small handful of games last year, none this year.

The decision not to send Fraser to the postseason is an interesting one, given that he was far and away the most popular choice in a recent (December, 2005) player poll as the League's most consistent referee. Of course, that might mean that the players see Fraser as consistently awful, but the fact of the matter is that it's inconsistency in officiating more than poor interpretation of the rules that infuriate coaches and players.

Devils center Scott Gomez said of Fraser, "He's consistent. And he's got the respect from players and knows how to give it back."

Simon Gagne of the Flyers noted that "Kerry does a great job every time we have him here. What I like about him, I can go talk to him if I need answers to some questions."

But the comments of an anonymous Maple Leafs player may best sum up why Fraser missed the playoffs: "He's consistent all right. He hoses us all the time."

Instigating Change

Eric over at Off Wing has a great post up today about the effectiveness of the current instigator rule (which, contrary to popular belief, was in place prior to the beginning of Gary Bettman's tenure as Commish).

The post is written in the context of Brendan Shanahan's outburst last night regarding the perceived reverse-star treatment that Jaromir Jagr gets from NHL referees, and contains a lot of food for thought, including a lengthy excerpt from an article by former Cap (and Harvard grad) Neil Sheehy.

But what I find somewhat ironic is that Shanny was on the rules committee (or whatever they called themselves) that actually strengthened the instigator rule after the lockout. Had the League done away with the rule at that time (i.e. if all the plumbers supposedly taking their cheap shots at poor Jaromir could be dispensed with by, say, Colton Orr without fear of an extra penalty) maybe Shanahan et. al. wouldn't have to rely on the referees to make sure Jagr had adequate space on the ice.

Update: Caps Nut has a good post following up on this issue with some interesting pre-last night quotes from Shanny. Basically, he was against obstruction penalties before he was for them. Quoth Shanny:

There is nothing in the rule book that says if one player touches another player with his stick, it's two minutes for hooking. There's nothing in the rule book that says if one player touches another player with his hand, it's two minutes for holding.... We would rather have a missed call than a phantom call.

Well, Brendan, they missed some last night. Happy? No?