HOW TO REF IN THE NEW NHL 101 - PENALISE THE HABS

First of my eternal gratitude goes out to Maxime Lapierre. Thanks to him and Crosby's immaturity, we have been blessed with an exciting and emotional two game series which will send many running for their heart medicines during the rare commercial brake. Whether we win or loose the series, playing two high emotional games can only help in reviving the lost pulse of our team.

We've seen signs of life lately the most recent one being Don Souray's definitive message in the second period. You can rest assured the Pens will have their heads up when Souray's on the ice on Sunday.

The only down side to Souray handing out a can of whoopass was the grose negligence and trigger happiness of Don Coharsky. The 2-5-10-game misconduct to Souray was a major mental spasm to say the least. But the cherry on the top was the decision to let this guy who assaulted Koivu and drop the gloves against Souray get away with just a major for fighting...I mean a minor for charging or boarding or roughing...wait a minute did he get away with no penalty?! Well if he doesn't get major for fighting and Souray gets a five for fighting AND a two for INSTIGATING I ask you Dan, who did Souray instigate a non existing fight with? Oh it was that leprecon again? Well if you're out of pills I'm sure Mecgouh can lend you a few.

Now understand that many (not all) of these calls were up to interpretation and its up to the refs to decide. They make mistakes and unfortunately in Montreal we are constantly reminded of this. My problem with last night however is that all interpretations were one sided...as if you had one side favoured. If you are really going to burden a team with a seven minute penalty (keep in mind one of them was a major) you best absolutely positive that the sequence in your head is exactly what happened. The interpretation of the ref was that: 1) the guy getting whooped did not drop the gloves (so no major to him) and 2) Souray kept hitting Armstrong while he was just trying to protect him self. I find it extremely difficult to believe that none of the refs (especially the one trying to pull Souray off his traumatized victim) saw Souray getting punched in the face twice. This leads me to believe that either Coharsky did not listen to his linesmen or the linesmen did not speak up during this gross miss-sentencing. Either way all the refs on the ice failed their jobs simultaneously and with their boss present in the arena I wonder what the repercussions will be? Nothing I presume.

Now that I have that off my chest I have learnt two lessons from this. 1) Some of the refs do not hesitate to go on a hunch in calling penalties. In some cases (such as last night) it is a game deciding decision. The NHL must crack down on the officials who make such obvious mistakes on game deciding goals/7 minute penalties or anything of this nature.

Lesson #2) Souray, if you're going to pummel someone, don't make it so one sided. Remember what happened in Calgary? Again it was the rare occasion where you dropped the gloves and you damn near changed his face forever. Let the poor saps get in the first few punches and then you can annihilate them.

Part Two of this game discussion will follow tomorrow (with all the good stuff we did and how proud I am of our team for sticking in there and getting that point).