Like them or not Alex Burrows and Maxim Lapierre haven’t figured out how to play an honest game.
BOSTON — It really isn’t about whether or not you like the Vancouver Canucks, abhor them, or whether they qualify as Canada’s Team, a term we’ve never cared for.
Beauty, alas, is in the eye of the beholder.
In Maxim Lapierre, the Canucks fan sees a toothy grin and a game-winning goal, while others temper that snapshot with the embarrassing bit of play acting he plied in the first period of Game 5. Zdeno Chara’s stick touched Lapierre’s torso, and Lapierre acted like he’d been run through by a jousting lance.
A Canucks fan wonders how that cross check by Dennis Seidenberg could possibly not be called. The guy in Ottawa sees No. 14’s head snap back roughly four times a game, and wonders how on earth a referee could tell when he’s watching the gritty Alex Burrows, or his alter ego, spring-boarder Alexandre Despatie?
But here’s the problem for Vancouver: referees aren’t Canucks fans. They aren’t Boston Bruins fans, or fans of any team in the National Hockey League.
They are, like us sports writers, observers whose job it is to separate fiction from reality. And deep down, they are hockey men, just like players, coaches, and managers.
There is a term that is exclusive to hockey, one you seldom hear in a football locker room or baseball clubhouse. When an NHLer gains the permanent respect in hockey circles, he is known by his peers simply as an honest player.
It is faint praise — unless you know the culture. Then, it is the ultimate compliment.
So, by their hockey DNA, officials are less trustful of any foul that involves a player not thought to be an honest player.
Burrows is a very good player but you can’t dupe officials as often as he has over the years, and be known as an honest player.
Lapierre has dug his hole even deeper over the years. In NHL circles, his reputation is likely irretrievable.
That’s not simply my opinion, or some fan’s view, and nor does it mean that he can’t help your team win. Clearly he can.
Two skilled players like these, however, have become a metaphor for the Canucks. They don’t need to dive to be impactful, useful players. Nor do the Canucks need those forged elements to win the Stanley Cup.
The team would be fine — perhaps even further ahead — without those elements.
"They have so much speed and skill on that side," Bruins Brad Marchand said. "We have to play physical to try and slow them down. If we’re worried about guys falling down and stuff like that, that’s what the refs are there for is to make judgment calls and they’ll do that."
And there is the rub, folks.
We’ve had the conversation enough times, with enough NHL referees. Like just over a year ago, after that incident between referee Stephane Auger and Burrows.
You’ll recall Burrows’ claim that Auger had threatened to pay him back for some fakery in a game Auger had refereed earlier that season. Then Auger called two late penalties on Burrows, as if on cue.
What Auger had done wrong, a few fellow officials told me the next day, was follow Burrows around during the warmup, conducting a conversation heard by only between the two of them. He left the interpretation of that chat open to a he-said she-said scenario that followed that night in Vancouver.
If an NHL official were allowed to speak publicly to this, here is what he would say:
"I go to the bench to talk to the coach, I stand in front of the player, and I make sure his teammates can hear me. I tell the coach, ‘Look, I don’t know what is a penalty and what isn’t a penalty with this guy. So I’m just not going to call anything with him, because then none of us look bad.’"
At that moment, the player’s coach and teammates all realize the same thing: This player has turned the officials against them, to some small extent. And they know the opponent, as the Bruins did in Game 5, will take advantage of that impunity whenever possible.
So even if it is only by a small increment, the actions of Lapierre and Burrows make it harder to win. The calls that aren’t made, the Lucic powerplay evened out by Burrows’ perceived dive — how could the ref possibly tell? — they are going to cost you.
The goal of the referee is that the player’s own teammates and coaches cure him. Why that has not happened in Vancouver, under a solid man like Alain Vigneault, we just don’t know.
Via twitter, Canucks fans have asked, "Why don’t referees call each incident separately from the other ones. Why does one call affect the next?"
The answer: Human nature, and tradition.
Human nature penned the old standard, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
For the rest of this Stanley Cup final, it will be shame on Burrows, and shame on Lapierre.
That’s the way it works, and that’s the way it always has worked in hockey.
And it won’t change for a couple of guys who, like them or not, have never figured out how to play an honest game.
