Re: Mariucci Classic Championship: Northeastern @ Minnesota 12/31/11
You have video? I only have audio, and Wally's bias makes it a little difficult to get a true feel.
And that's game. 3-1.
I was at the game, actually. And given the angle that Wally/Frank had, with no video replay to work with, they couldn't see what was happening either, with the only camera(s) at the same level they were at.
The biggest problem was how they seemed to call everything even vaguely callable as a penalty against MN, but let anything that wasn't an obvious mugging (and some of those) against NE go. 2 of NE's 3 goals were 5 on 3 PPs... in every one, at least one of the penalties was complete BS
As examples (not necessarily leading to the 5 on 3, but representative of the last 2 periods of the night): The puck is near the penalty box and Matson is near the bench heading over for a change and gets flattened, with no call... but a NE play has the puck behind the net, takes a shoulder to the chest, and MN gets called for interference. Or, Carman (may have been Miller, can't remember for sure) has the puck on a breakaway, NE player dives into him from behind, half knocking him over, half maybe hitting the puck, and no call... Haula and a NE player are racing for the puck along the boards, the NE player dives to hit the puck away from Eric, and Haula goes off for hooking. Calls like these were made all night.
Look at Lucia's comment in the post-game interview... "I'm not going to say anything more about the penalties.... I don't want to get in trouble" May not be an exact quote, but it's pretty close. How often do you see tDon flying off the hook during a game if there aren't bad calls? He completely lost it at least three times last night that I can remember, maybe more.
I think several of the penalties that MN got called for were OK, but NE got away with the same things, and for all three of the 5 on 3 PPs that NE had, at least one of the calls was complete BS. Just look at the final numbers... NE had TWELVE powerplays, MN had 5. NE had three 5 on 3s, MN had none (and after the first two, there were at least two instances that the refs should have called NE for another penalty with MN on the PP)
Granted, MN couldn't manage to score even when they did have a PP, but spending 16+ minutes in the last two periods short-handed, I'm not at all surprised.
