LAS VEGAS — It’s the confusion that the National Hockey League wallows in — shift after shift, head-scratching ruling after head-scratching ruling — that leaves us in search of some pattern. Any pattern.
Klim Kostin is allowed two, three crosschecks to Shea Theodore’s back without a call. He has mastered the threshold, and uses this knowledge as a weapon against Theodore’s back.
A frustrated Theodore fires back with a quick spear to the midsection, and the referee’s arm goes up. Because there’s no negotiating on a spear — except when the zebra turns on his mic and tells the world, “No. 27 Vegas. Two minutes for slashing.”
Whaaa … ?
We’ve got a solution, and we’ll get to it. But first, the latest Department of Player Safety impression of a three-toed sloth playing Jenga.
On Friday night in Vegas, both teams will be without their top minutes’ defencemen: Darnell Nurse for Edmonton, Alex Pietrangelo for the Golden Knights.
Nurse will sit because he answered Nicolas Hague’s request for a fight at the end of a shift rather than the beginning, “instigating” a scrap in which Hague was at such a disadvantage that he rained eight punches down on Nurse before the “instigator” threw even one.
Pietrangelo will pay an identical penance because he skated across the ice to target the Stanley Cup Playoffs’ most dangerous goal scorer, held his stick over his head like an axe for two or three seconds, and then brought it down on Leon Draisaitl’s forearms, the puck likely 40 to 60 feet away from the incident.
Same thing?
Well, same suspension.
What’s offside? What the hell is goalie interference, anyhow?
Welcome to the NHL, where the longer you hang around, the more you realize you’re not the only one who doesn’t have a clue what the rule book means.
How come all those players who have jumped New York Rangers defenceman Jacob Trouba after one of his blow-up hits don’t automatically get an instigator penalty? Do you think Trouba is looking for a fight seconds after one of those collisions?
Of course he isn’t, but at the bottom end of this “game management” pyramid, the referees decide that it’s OK to force a player to fight after he has hit one of the non- instigator’s teammates.
On Thursday, that game management took place at the top, as head of NHL player safety George Parros evened up the Nurse and Pietrangelo suspensions as if a solid scrap between two willing combatants and a seldom-seen slash at the game’s top goal scorer are on a par with each other.
Look, I despise the instigator penalty altogether. It has not helped the game in the way it was intended, the designated fighter is extinct, and when it suddenly gets pulled out of the hat like some referee’s rabbit, it begs for inconsistency compared to the multitude of identical altercations we can easily cite.
There were 30 instigator penalties called this season, in 334 fights (668 fighting majors this season). Only two were assessed in the final five minutes of a game — to Max Domi and Luke Glendenning — but neither player was suspended.
Yet somehow Nurse, who has been spoiling for a fight with Hague — and vice versa — the entire series, became the lone suspension this season. Ah, the wicked ways of the Wheels of Justice …
“I think the instigator (in the final five minutes) was put in place to protect guys who didn’t want to fight, from guys who wanted to,” Nurse told reporters in Edmonton before the suspension was levied. “That wasn’t the case last night. He asked me multiple times to fight. It was two guys who wanted to fight.”
Had referees Chris Rooney and Graham Skilliter been around this series from the start, they’d have been aware of this brewing altercation when Game 4 began. They would have known that each player had asked the other to go, and that both were willing and ready combatants.
They would also know that the Golden Knights have struggled with Edmonton’s power play — and specifically Draisaitl on that unit. Eliminating Draisaitl could turn the series in their favour, while Nurse was a top-minutes defenceman fighting a third-pairing guy.
Would Pietrangelo have slashed Derek Ryan that way? No.
Is it different if Nurse beats up Theodore, or Jack Eichel? Yes.
Does Draisaitl need to be out for the series for DoPS to move the needle to two games, as quickly as it cemented that ridiculous instigator at one game?
So, the solution:
Same referees, all series.
Bring in three zebras at the start of the series, and like baseball, rotate them throughout. Trust them not to build up biases against individual players, and allow them to gain a feel for who wants to fight whom, and whose arm is most valuable when broken.
Let them live a series the way we do — fans, journalists — and allow the players to gain a feel for the game and how it is going to be officiated night after night.
No wonder every player in the league complains about inconsistency. You might not see the same ref for six weeks during the regular season.
As for Thursday’s ruling, it should have been zero games for Nurse, one for Pietrangelo.
But what do we know?
I’m as confused by George Parros and the gang as you all are.