The Minnesota Wild was robbed of their deserved victory over the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday night. Hockey officials from the NHL made bad call after bad call.
This game was one of the worst displays of NHL officiating in the history of the league. It was an embarrassment to the NHL. It was a black eye on the NHL. The only fans that seem to think that the game ended in fair fashion are those fans from the state of Colorado.
When Matte Cooke took Tyson Barrie out of the game with a dirty knee to knee hit in game two, there were a few fans who thought that Cooke’s hit wasn’t dirty. Most fans, even Wild fans thought that he should be suspended. Now fast forward to tonight’s game. Very few Avalanche fans will admit that these hockey officials were incompetent.
Avalanche Fans Comeback
Avalanche fans on Twitter and around the web defended the officials tonight. They will tell you that Landenskoog’s penalty for his snowing (skate sending snow) of Minnesota Wild goalie Darcy Kuemper’s face was a bad call.
I recommend that Avalanche fans look at the NHL rule book to see that that a penalty will get called every time. It involves a goalie and goalies are protected. As much as the officials might not have wanted to call the penalty they had to.
I know that its painful for Avalanche fans to admit that their team should have lost and that it was the officials that ensured that Colorado would get a bogus victory on Saturday but if it was my team that won the game that way, I wouldn’t think that it was fair. I would have the coconuts to admit that it wasn’t fair.
The officials made terrible calls all night long. It started with a call on Minnesota Wild player Mikael Granlund for goalie interference. Granlund didn’t even touch Semyon Varlamov.
Brutal Sequence of Non-Calls Lead to Avalanche Equalizer
I told my wife after the Wild took the lead in the third period that the officials would find a way to try end ensure that Colorado would win the game. I was proven correct. With a little over one minute left in the third period, Minnesota’s Charlie Coyle was skating towards the Colorado zone, he was about to attempt to shoot the puck into the open net, when an Avalanche player held him (obvious penalty). No call was made.
Then the puck was played up ice with two Avalanche players skating into the Wild zone. P.A Parentau would score the equalizer but the video above shows that Colorado player Paul Statsny was offside on the play. One missed call was pathetic enough but two missed calls within ten seconds? That is terrible.
I think that those officials should be fired. They were either incompetent or were cheating. I would hate to think that an NHL official would cheat. So now I’m left to believe that these NHL officials weren’t good enough to even officiate your child’s hockey game. They were terrible. They were brutal Saturday.
It doesn’t matter now that the Avalanche won a game that they had no business winning and that it was due to terrible calls and non-calls by the officials but this game is in the books. The only justice for the Wild would be for them to win the next two games and win the series in Colorado. That would be justice and it wouldl be wonderful see frowns on Avalanche fans faces.
Anthony Bloch (AKA Sportmentary) – is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Sportmentary Online Sports Talk.
In addition to running his blog, Anthony writes a weekly column for Last Word on Sports and writes about the Minnesota Wild for The Hockey Writers.
