It’s hard enough playing the Stanley Cup Conference Finals against a quick young team with a lot of skill. It becomes impossible when you include the officials to the people they must play against.

If you are not watching the Blackhawks v. Red Wings game 3 right now, Detroit defenseman Niklas Kronwall absolutely demolished Chicago’s Martin Havlat. Havlat was clearly knocked unconscious. Dustin Byfuglien of Chicago came over and charged Kronwall into the boards, and a scrum ensued with no regard for Havlat lying on the ice. The resulting penalties from all that?

13:08		Johan Franzen: 2 Minutes for Roughing Duncan Keith
13:08		Dustin Byfuglien: 2 Minutes for Roughing Johan Franzen
13:08		Niklas Kronwall: 5 Minutes for interference Martin Havlat (Served by Jiri Hudler)
13:08		Niklas Kronwall: 10-Minute Game Misconduct Martin Havlat

Paul’s got the CBC video, and you can hear how stunned the announcers are that Kronwall got tossed. It was a violent hit, but Havlat had the puck in his skates and didn’t have his head up. Kronwall was on the train tracks and just smeared him. Byfuglien came charging across the ice to board Kronwall, and gets no penalty. Kronwall? He gets a 5 minutes and a game misconduct. Ken Holland looks furious with the call, as does Steve Yzerman.

The officiating has been disgusting this game. Eddie Olczyk, Brian Engblom and Keith Jones all agreed that the hit was extremely hard yet clean and did not warrant a penalty of that magnitude. According to Paul over at Kukla’s Korner in a comment on the A2Y live blog:

Milbury on the hit via CBC, Get the refs on a bus tomorrow and ship them out of the playoffs.
Kelly Hrudey says he cannot understand what the NHL is trying to do.

Basically every talking head on TV tonight agrees that the hit was perfectly fine, and should not have been called for either 5 minutes or a game misconduct.

Dan O’Halloran and Dave Jackson are the refs. They have on more than one occasion made questionable calls. The most vivid was calling goaltender interference on Tomas Holmstrom last year in the WCF when the Dallas Stars played Detroit. It waived off a Nick Lidstrom goal, and prompted Detroit coach Mike Babcock to speculate to the media if the rules had been changed without anyone telling him.

The interesting point that the CBC announcers keep making is that when the hit happened, no arms were in the air. Neither O’Halloran nor Jackson made an initial call. It was a linesman, who are allowed to call major penalties.

It’s unfortunate that Havlat got knocked out. He’s a great player, albeit a fragile one, and you never want to see any player lying unconscious on the ice like that. Especially with his teammates scrumming around him, which I found to be appalling. But it was an emotional call, and one that was made based on the result. It may have also been a reputation call, as TSN recently accused Kronwall of leaving his feet–”launching” as ex-Hurricanes coach Peter Laviolette calls it (on an unrelated note, if that’s launching or charging, then what the hell do you call the hits Ovechkin makes?).

But the point is, the officiating has been a joke, and I’m not saying that because I’m an unapologetic Red Wings fan. Referees need to be smarter than that, and not get sucked into the emotion of the home crowd. Blatant home team bias by the refs should be left to the NBA and not happen in the Conference Finals.

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