In Response to The LA Game: I'm Not Mad At The Refs, I'm Mad At The Refs

In case that title was confusing, let me clear this up for you... I'm not mad at the Referees because I believe they lost the game for your Detroit Red Wings, I'm mad at the Referees because of the blown calls and the idea that plays that can cause injury, or did cause injury, are not called.

Let's take the example of Dustin Penner's hit on Brendan Smith.

Smith does not have the puck and is obviously blindsided. Penner is a big body and can cause damage. The refs can claim that they didn't see this but if I'm a ref, I see someone down with the puck no where in the vicinity, I'm stopping play and investigating. To the Detroit Free Press, Smith says "It was more whiplash than anything." Whiplash is dangerous and is often linked with a concussion. I'm really hoping that Smith is okay and this isn't re-occuring. Not to mention that Smith is just coming back from an injury and if Penner doesn't hit Smith's head, he hits the same shoulder that Smith has just rehabbed.

Let's take the other example from last night's game, Dan Cleary gets high sticked by Jake Muzzin.

This is another time when an injury could have occurred, and did, but the referees did not call anything. MLive says that Cleary received 15 stitches around his orbital bone (eye) after either getting hit with a high stick by Jake Muzzin or being interfered with by Jake Muzzin. Not a penalty according to the refs from last night's game.

For a league that is so focused on letting fans, players, teams, and anyone who will listen, how tuned in to player safety they are, these are unacceptable. Anytime that a player has "whiplash" it can result in a concussion, the very thing that this league is (supposedly) most worried about. This has to end.

The league rulebook has a rule that says you cannot touch the puck off a face-off, Pavel Datsyuk was whistled for this yesterday. Okay, it's frustrating that it was called when the team was already killing a penalty and the Kings scored but, it's in the rule book -- it should be called. Just like interference and high sticking are in the rule book but were not called yesterday. What frustrates me most is that plays that can, and do, injure players are let go but if a player touches the puck off a FO, so help us all.

All I'm saying, in this long winded rant, is that if a ref is going to call a face-off violation, with pretty much no possibility of injury, they need to call plays that can injure opposing players and those on the player's team as well.

A Transition from Anger to Apathy

  My dad once told me that I heard the Wings goal horn from inside the womb. That is how long I have been a Wings fan. My fandom's intensity has ebbed and flowed throughout the years but it has never gone away. I have always known that I could come back to hockey and it would be there for me to enjoy. I have always been the weird kid all throughout my schooling who is from Chicago but, has a love unlike any other for the Detroit Red Wings and all other sports from the D. Then, in 2004, the NHL locked the players out and I lost the only live hockey experience I'd ever known. I was lucky enough to be sharing a skybox at the United Center with a few other families, or something like that, and when the last lockout happened, we got rid of it. We never have liked the Blackhawks, and never will, but it was the our way to see our Wings in Chicago a few times a year. (I am very lucky to have had that experience and I'm not expecting sympathy for losing it.) 

  We, as hockey fans, lost an entire season 8 years ago and going into this summer I thought, "They would never do that again, not after the record gains they've been championing..." It turns out, I was wrong.  I sincerely hope that we get hockey back this year but if we don't, I'm really not sure how much I care. I will find other ways to get my hockey fix. I've always considered myself a hockey fan first and then a Wings fan. Will this lockout change that? Probably not. 

   

  Congratulations NHL, you've made this diehard fan, apathetic. Come back, or don't. At this point, I'm really not sure I care. I will most likely be back but, I don't know that I will ever have that obsessed, crazed fan persona anymore. I may catch a game when I can but, it will most likely not be appointment television. 

Call me when you, both players and owners, are done being idiots... You might want to call with a very large apology, you have a very large amount to explain.