Frank Seravalli was joined by Mike McKenna to discuss whether the refereeing is at its worst ever in the latest episode of Daily face-to-face live.
Frank Seravalli: Let’s talk about the Dallas Stars and the Minnesota Wild. Speaking of controversy, difficult evening for Garret Rank and Chris Lee. You look at the official and Marcus Foligno finds himself in the box for both goals which are scored on really questionable calls. The first being just a hit along the boards that was called interference, the defenseman clearly touched Dallas’ puck in the seconds leading up and seemed to get out of the way.
So Foligno gets the interference call there, then later chasing a check, he’s basically cross-checked in the face and goes down and gets called for tripping. I don’t understand either of the calls, but I certainly understand the Minnesota Wild’s frustration. What did Marcus Foligno do to deserve all those calls, who hurt Mike, heading to the show to get to this point?
Mike McKenna: Yeah, which Cheerios took a leak from. I don’t really understand either because the two penalties Foligno took, one for interference and one for tripping, neither of those should have been appeals. Foligno landed hits on both counts and one of them was actually the injured party as Marchment punched him in the face as he went to strike. So I can usually pawn that on the ref who doesn’t have a good view of it or maybe he saw something different. It was just two blown calls.
In the end, whatever. The Wild had every chance in the world to win this game so I can understand Foligno being crazy but he is one of their main physical game drivers Frank. It almost feels like there’s something coming from the league saying we need to keep an eye out for certain guys we know how to hit. Well, why? He didn’t do anything wrong in those instances, so I didn’t like either of the calls and I didn’t like that the Wild couldn’t score. Because it’s on them, they had the opportunity to do it, and then Ryan Hartman gets fired for yelling at the referees with three and a half minutes left in a 3-1 game?
You have to keep a cool head, especially as a number one center right now. So much blame for going there.
Frank Seravalli: Jake Oettinger also slams the door for the Dallas Stars, an incredibly solid performance for the Minnesota native in the presence of his family. So, to put an arc to the referees’ conversation, there hasn’t been a hotter topic Mike in these Stanley Cup playoffs so far than that one.
Is the refereeing really worse this year or has it always been this bad?
Mike McKenna: I think we over-analyze everything. It’s difficult because it was two clearly wrong calls from Frank, so it’s one, access to information, but it’s also a climax. So my question is what is the solution?
We all want to complain as much as we want but how to fix it you can’t just go and get different referees they are the best in the world at what they do. I don’t think there is a real clear answer other than to score more goals than the other team. Play the ball as it lies, you have to deal with the referees.
You can watch the rest of the episode here…
