Mar 01, 2013 | pstarling | 794 views
Screwed again
If there are two story lines that I am sick and tired of writing about this year, its bad calls by officials, and playing with a short bench.
In Lindsay Teal's 2nd of 6 playoff games in this round robin, we took a road trip up to Fenelon Falls to play Sturgeon. The only problem is that of our 11 skaters, only 7 of them were able to make the trip, one is suspended so there is a totally valid reason, another one has a decent reason as well, and two others just didn't show up, no text, no phone call, no nothing, not knowing if they are coming or not. Its very frustrating as a bench staff person to watch 7 dedicated players playing their asses off, knowing that there is nothing I can do about it, because how can you bench players when there isn't enough to cover off those that are being sat!
knowing that they needed to be well disciplined in their play tonight, Teal did a great job of that, only receiving 3 minor penalties, one of which was an unsportsmanlike penalty after one of our players got pushed around by 4 Sturgeon players, and none of them received a thing. Another one of the penalties was for tripping, and the Sturgeon player tripped on his own skates! But those were not the worst calls of the game!
The first period was a lot of back and forth play in both ends of the ice, with 2:49 left in the period, Brock managed to get another of what has seemed to become lately, his patented mini breakaways, on which of course he potted the first goal of the game. Just :23 seconds later, Kole slammed another puck past the bewildered Sturgeon net-minder for a 2-0 lead by the visitors.
The 2nd period was more good work by Teal trying hard to nurse their 2 goal lead with a short bench, but with just over 4 minutes gone in the period, and on the power play, Sturgeon was able to cut the lead in half. That's when the really stupid call came. About 1 minute after Sturgeon scored their goal, Lindsay iced the puck, however, the front linesman waved it off for some reason, no whistle means keep playing, and that's exactly what Mike C did, and promptly scored, as called by the official, and report and recorded on the game sheet. Well, the Sturgeon coaches went nuts, but they didn't get a penalty or suspension, no, instead the officials talked things over for about a minute, then came to our bench to let us know that the goal was being called off due to a mistake in not calling the icing! Never in my days on the bench, or in the many more days on the bench by our coach for the night, Peter Mitchell, have either of us ever seen a reversal of a call such as this. After much discussion back and forth, being careful not to have one of us thrown out of the game, the goal was taken away, and a face-off was done at center ice. Well, obviously the puck knew where it belonged, so just about 20 seconds later it found itself parked in the back of the Sturgeon net again, at which time the Sturgeon coach pulled their goalie and put the back-up keeper between the pipes. Before the end of the 2nd period however, Sturgeon managed to get another puck past the Lindsay goalie, who I might say was standing on his head making some outrageous stops along the way.
Lindsay would nurse that 3-2 lead for almost the entire 3rd period, until with under a minute left Sturgeon pulled their goalie for the 6th attacker and scored that illusive goal with just :42 left on the clock. The last thing our bench wanted to hear me say at the final buzzer was "ok, take a quick rest guys, there's just 5 more minutes to play now." That's right, overtime, 5 minutes, 5 on 5. Well, we did what we needed to do at that point with an exhausted bench, which was play sound defensive hockey, although we did have a couple of very good chances to win the game. All in all, to walk away from the rink with a 3-3 tie and only 7 skaters, we were fairly happy with that.
Had it not been for a crappy call by the officiating crew, Lindsay would have won that game by a score of 4-3. Next game on Sunday afternoon vs Lindsay Black.