So the big hockey story right now is from the Wings game the other day, where referee Tim Peel (a veteran ref) was caught on an open mic saying that he intentionally called a questionable penalty on Nashville as a "make up call" for an earlier call on Detroit.
A few thoughts on this:
- The "make up call" has been part of hockey forever and Peel just got caught saying what tons of other refs think, and have done, and that players and announcers recognize too. Doesn't make it right, but this has been an unofficial part of the game for a long time. (Somewhere Mickey Redmond is laughing his ass off - will be very interesting to watch the Wings next game to see what he and Ken Daniels have to say about this.)
- There's been complaining about NHL refereeing for awhile now. And they do have a great deal of discretion and can affect the game in major ways. But it's also the case that in the replay era, it seems to me that they don't miss too many calls. Think about offside calls and how often the linesmen get that right with players going at full speed. That said, a good long look at the quality of refereeing is probably overdue, as is some sort of accountability structure, so this incident may produce that.
- Most important: the NHL is tying itself very closely to the sports gambling industry. I've noticed this quite a bit in the last few weeks as it became legal in Michigan and the Wings games are full of ads. Plus the out-of-town scores on the broadcast are giving the over-under for each game. If you're going to have that relationship, you better DAMN WELL clean up the refereeing. I think as much as anything, that's why they moved so quickly to fire Tim Peel this morning. The last thing you want is any kind of suspicion about officiating if you're going all-in (so to speak) on sports betting.
Not a good night for the NHL but good to see they moved quickly to deal with it. And there's more that they'll need to do.