CALGARY, Alberta -- To be clear and fair, the Penguins lost to the Flames, 2-1 in overtime, Thursday night at the Scotiabank Saddledome because Mike Smith performed out of his mind in the Calgary net and because Mark Giordano blistered a top-shelf bullet to conclude it.
To be clearer and fairer, NHL officiating is awful across the board, no different for any of the league's 31 member teams.
But my goodness, on this particular night, the Penguins got seriously shafted by the performance of referees Steve Kozari and especially inexperienced Kendrick Nicholson, who made it to the league in early 2015 and has only 177 games to his credit.
Although credit might not be the appropriate term.
In general, penalties even up in the NHL, as we've seen for decades. Either that, or they become reflective of the balance in overall play. Well, the Penguins stormed the Flames in the scoreless first period for a 19-8 advantage in shots and would wind up with a 44-34 windfall even though the home team would get four power plays to the visitors' one. That one was a first-period tripping call against Mikael Backlund.
In the second period, the Flames drew three penalties, the first of which was this Phil Kessel slash on Johnny Gaudreau:
Kessel's stick comes across Gaudreau's shaft, a little higher than halfway up. Although Kessel makes nothing remotely resembling a swinging or forceful motion toward the shaft, Gaudreau easily loses his grip, and Nicholson raises his right arm.
This is insanity. Because that, my friends, is a stickcheck. There's even been a name for it in the hockey lexicon since right around the time that Canadians up on these very same prairies first started using dogsleds to compete on each other's ponds.
It's as legal as legal gets, even under the league's new guidelines put forth this summer to protect Marc Methot's pinky finger from the wicked ways of Sidney Crosby. It meets not a single criterion for what constitutes slashing, not in 2017, not in 1917.
The next one's a little more nebulous, as Tom Kuhnhackl does, indeed, put his stick into the feet of the apparently very delicate Gaudreau. Therefore, tripping is the right call, this one by Kozari:
Here's the rub: When Gaudreau isn't experiencing Shakespearean-level tragedy on the ice, he's also one of the game's most graceful skaters. And if you watch that loop up there enough times, you'll notice that Kuhnhackl takes mostly a pickle-stab approach to the trip. It's not much. And it's most definitely not enough to send Johnny Hockey flying forward onto his stomach, accompanied by the extra drama of both his legs splattering to the sides to call further attention.
This is diving. Or unsportsmanlike conduct/embellishment, as it's officially called when a quality ref is on the scene.
And yes, to address the common argument in these cases, it can be both. Because Kuhnhackl legitimately commits a trip, and Gaudreau legitimately goes out of his way to embellish. Both guys should sit.
I saved this beauty for last:
Dear God, this was called roughing.
Ryan Reaves was sent to the box for roughing the Flames' Matthew Tkachuk and, if I weren't there to witness Nicholson raising his arm authoritatively upon seeing this, I'd never believe that this happened.
Roughing, by definition, is ... um, roughing. It's doing rough things. Glove shoves. Facewashes. Fights that aren't really fights. Like that.
That up there, for crying out loud, is a bodycheck. Which has been part of hockey since right around the time those dogsledders started stickchecking each other.
I approached Reaves afterward to ask a question that, as best I can recall, began with the two words 'What the ...?' and clearly didn't require being completed.
"Dude, I've got no idea," the big man interjected. "It's not just that it was a bodycheck. It's that, if you watch it, I wait until he's almost all the way turned around and facing me. So there's no boarding, no nothing."
But, as all bad refs are wont to do, Nicholson went outcome-based and reacted as he did either because Tkachuk was immediately injured -- ribs into the top of a bench will do that -- or because Reaves is Reaves.
Or so I thought.
"I don't think it was either of those," Reaves added. "I think it's because their bench made a whole ton of noise when it happened. That's when the reaction came."
Ouch. So it's possibly worse than I'd thought.
"But I don't think it's because it was me. I've got a reputation for hitting guys, and it isn't a bad reputation. I've had one suspension my whole career."
Looked it up: Three games for boarding in early 2016.
At any rate, Reaves was livid upon going to the box, smacking his stick on the boards before entering. And just before the third period, Mike Sullivan invited Nicholson over to his bench to berate him at a level I'm not sure I'd seen from this coach beforehand.
As they were finishing, Sullivan asked Nicholson a question. Once he got his answer, Sullivan snapped demonstratively, "OK, thanks!"
Afterward, as ever, Sullivan kept his perpetually mum stance on refs.
He first at least acknowledged the notion that maybe Reaves received a minor for being Reaves: "He has a reputation of being a tough player. I think when he goes and makes a bodycheck, antennas are up."
Of the officiating in general, given the Penguins' command of the play: "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if I agree or not. The referees are going to call it the way they see it."
Regardless of the rulebook at hand, evidently.
