The Steve Dangle Podcast - Matt Smartin | June 21, 2021

Starting point is 00:00:00 i mean i didn't know that the nhl wanted vegas in the series that badly they had to have their own people step in like as much as i thought montreal wasn't gonna win a game i didn't want them to to lose like this that's this is crazy It really is a shame that this has become such a story because what the story should be is what a damn series. Yep. Like, so good. The better team has lost back-to-back games.

Starting point is 00:00:44 Yeah. Vegas was way better, lost. Montreal was way better, lost. It's just perfect chaos. There's so many stories. Montreal was getting the lion's share of them. robin leonard stepping in golden quotes after the game that's what we should be talking about but no we're talking about chris freaking lee one of the most experienced officials in the

Starting point is 00:01:06 national hockey league 1171 career nhl games first game was in 2001 and he's brutal 20 years over 20 years okay now for anybody that may have missed the game what happened specifically at the end of the second let's let's talk about the the if you were to explain this to a person who you know who maybe doesn't love hockey and you try to make it interesting how would you explain this and there's a reason i'm asking this question so here jesse no go ahead go ahead well okay so in hockey there are rules um and they're just kind of not calling them and i saw a few vegas fans get defensive this isn't about the vegas golden knights yeah it's

Starting point is 00:01:57 not about vegas it's not about you it's not about vegas being dirty or having a dirty reputation um i don't really think they do it's they're not freaking calling anything and like montreal cannot get on a power play and they're not calling anything and it's it's going both ways like Edmondson's check in the first period was pretty ugly right so they're just but they're just not calling anything and then they finally do I want to say it was cock and

Starting point is 00:02:26 yammy's hook am I getting so okay so I think I'm getting my games there was there was the one where so that must have been game three that when patch ready grab cock and yammy stick he held it yeah sort of thing did those game before

Starting point is 00:02:42 a little yeah he did the little chicken wing it the amount of stuff they're letting go makes the stuff that they call preposterous and it's just really really bad and what's unique about this situation is that it's the same officiating crew night in and night out um due to covid although unless there's been some sort of revelation that i'm not aware of they're being ambiguous about what covid means because as far as i can tell it's just officials can't travel and that's the issue i think it's just easier i i mean are you looking at us for an answer on that because uh i sure as hell don't know there's three specific instances that i look at and i'm like okay chris lee

Starting point is 00:03:29 specifically you're dropping the ball here one is the cory perry high stick to the face where he clearly gets high sticked in the face and he comes out this is game three when you see that his bloodied face there's blood on the ice and that should be a double minor to be a four minute power play for montreal there's no call there and there's some debate as to whether he got hit in the face with the puck or but he clearly got hit in the face with the stick once they slowed down slow motion he comes back after montreal wins he's at the bloody face he comes out like a wrestler amazing the second play was the suzuki call on the hooking when they didn't call penalties all game and then in the second period they he literally tapped i forget which vegas player he tapped but

Starting point is 00:04:12 he tapped him and they called the hooking penalty it's like if you're not going to call anything why call this hook that wasn't even a hook and then at the end of that power play after montreal kills that braden mcnabb and nick suzuki are fighting in front of the vegas golden knights net braden mcnabb is punching nick suzuki in the face he literally punches him in the face cross checks in the back a couple times and then they start roughing each other and nothing is called and the referees are there's two of them right in front of the guys while they're fighting while the game is happening and they don't call any penalties and that's what makes instant lose it on the broadcast and that's what made me just be like what the hell's going on this series why

Starting point is 00:04:51 can't these referees get a hold of this game and and i just sent a picture to the chat it was tweeted out by john scott it's chris lee staring straight at it and they got into a bit of a scuffle i think at worst i don't i still don't i i cannot make myself say they should both be going if they should both be going to the box it should be mcnab for suzuki too yeah and montreal all can i tell you what i think is happening with nick suzuki specifically he's getting the cadre treatment he's getting the cadre treatment he there was cadre was amazing at drawing penalties and in leafs nation we made a bit too big a deal of it and refs realized we're being made a fool by this player and they stopped calling anything suzuki you know amazing player amazing player

Starting point is 00:05:51 only going to get more amazing has had some spectacular dives oh yeah playoffs yeah he really has but it's worked it was working well like they weren't i mean some of those more egregious ones were no calls either side um but i think i don't know part of me wonders if this is yeah looks good on you refs just letting him take his lumps stop i tell you that that's the wrong way to referee a game yeah i agree i 100 that's just wrong if that's what they're doing if that's what they're thinking in their heads you're wrong about how you should be officiating an nhl game because that would be retribution that's not what you're supposed to do you're called the game impartial party yeah call the game the way it's supposed to be called now i don't know like craig's

Starting point is 00:06:36 known for his hot takes i would say he's right i i i've never heard him get mad literally craig simpson got mad here we go and chris lee still hasn't called a penalty yet i mean the whistle hasn't even gone you want to lose control of the game this is how you do it it's just ridiculous I think what's interesting there, too, is even chris cuthbert got in on the action but uh the the the thing that gets to me is that we knew this was eventually going to happen right i mean we've been talking probably for the last three playoffs about this and you know people i well actually four playoffs ago you know i can remember people been like well you're only mad because the leafs lost to boston and that's

Starting point is 00:07:44 partially true uh but you can't tell me that that the reffing's been great and you can't tell me that other teams haven't pointed it out and you can't tell me that everybody hasn't seen the exact same thing and at a certain point it really doesn't have anything to do with the teams involved or the fans involved the nhl has piss poor shitty officiating period end of story send me the 25 000 fine mr bettman and and at a certain point you need to take responsibility for your game it's the nhl's game it's the nhl's brand and if the nhl would like to step up and get onto a bigger plane and people give me shit every time i say this you want to be on espn and tnt now with the kind of eyeball watching that that in you know if you want to be one of the big sports

Starting point is 00:08:29 this is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger they probably don't do anything about it now they probably don't do anything about it next year but one of these days it's actually going to blow up and it's going to be a problem there's such suckers for reputation too and this is one that grew in the colorado series because colorado couldn't get many calls out of vegas either and but the reputation is vegas is a heavy but clean team to their credit i think that's largely true like for a team that's built like them i don't think they commit that many infractions but there is some you know impeding guys and there is a little bit of there's been a a bunch we need a we need a more clearly defined definition of what checking from behind is

Starting point is 00:09:14 Cause there's, there's been a bunch in this series, a lot from Vegas and some to Vegas. And if you're in front of the net, you're allowed to check guys all the time in the back. Like you can cross cross check guys in the back. If you're in front of the net and it's not a penalty, even though on the rules, you're literally not allowed to do that. And like something like the Corey Perry incident.

Starting point is 00:09:35 So there was a stoppage after that. I was, I was told in my ear that it was to clean up blood from the ice, but I think it was just a regular scraping for God's sake. If there's a guy bleeding profusely from the face, we can all, there's no reason to get that call wrong when we all know what the call is. Right. And there's a stoppage. You have time to look at it, right? It's not a matter of, listen, I understand you can't be taking a break after every whistle.

Starting point is 00:10:02 That's ridiculous. At some point, the game has to move forward. You got to play. I get that, but there's a stoppage here. and Montreal is missing a very key player for them in Corey Perry it's the fourth round or sorry the third round every player lines one through four is a key player at this point but Corey Perry I think we all know is a bull in a china shop yeah that can't happen that can't happen can you imagine the story after game three Montreal loses with Corey Perry in the dressing room and he comes out looking like like scar yeah thank goodness they won that game is that that's honestly what i was saying like uh i don't like if you were a neutral fan i mean in that moment the habs become baby

Starting point is 00:10:47 face well and you wonder with the rafts like do you think he's carrying blood pellets like what is it that you think happened right what could have happened and why and perry like just throws his hands up because he's like well i promise i didn't do this to myself yeah it's the same this isn't wwe guys aren't blading sorry what it's the same thing with the uh goalie interference penalty we saw in the tampa bay series like when they got the power play and then the islanders scored on it and then tampa ended up winning the game we're like thank goodness uh that goal didn't come to come back to bite them in the butt and the referees are deciding the game like thank goodness here okay the right outcome played out even though the referees tried to get in the

Starting point is 00:11:26 middle of this hockey game and i'm so glad you brought that up jesse because this shows how deep the problem is with nhl officiating it's not a matter of simply call more penalties if the penalties they are calling are preposterous call the right ones call the right ones i i i don't know if we gotta help these guys out more with video or if we gotta have a like an eye in

The Steve Dangle Podcast - Matt Smartin | June 21, 2021

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.