Vancouver GM blasts officiating

If this is a top news story then I have to say that the Canuck's are starting to sound like Leaf's use too. Now they've quit whining and are quietly building a dynasty.

Unless the officials were 2010 World Cup bad, you can't blame a loss on them.

Anyone see a possible fine here from the NHL?

The Canucks want to blame someone for yet another epic collapse? They should look in the mirror.

-J.

What Gillis says is right. How do you explain the bad calls, the non calls and bad calls at the worst possible times. However the Canucks did let up in game 4, and Luongo let in a soft one at the start of game 5. But you have to wonder about the difference in power plays.

Caman maaaan. The 'Hawks have the 'Nucks number for the last few years. It's the same thing every season. The Canucks end up with the best (or almost best) record in the regular season, but choke in the playoffs, almost exclusively to the 'Hawks.

As much as I want to see any Canadian team bring the 'Cup home, the Canucks are consistently melting down early and often. They need to do some serious sould searching, and fast.

Searching for scapegoats is irrelevant. They need only blame themselves.

-J.

If you want to do this behind closed doors, no problem, go right ahead.
But blasting the officials publically is never a good thing to do, or at least wait until after the playoffs.

What message does it send the players...
..."doesn't matter how hard you try, the officials will make sure you lose."

Gilles may be right or wrong about the officiating but the numbers don't lie. I went to the box score for all six games and the Canucks have 124 minutes in penalties while the Hawks have 70.

It's strange that compared to the regular season one team is only averaging 2 more penalty minutes per game while the other is averaging over 9.

I guess Alain Vigneault suddenly decided the Sedin's skill set was better suited to playing like Dave Schulz and Tiger Williams than Guy Lafluer and Henri Richard.

I'm fairly certain that there's no way in hell that bad refereeing is single handedly responsible for a 7-2 or 5-0 pair of losses. Until someone compiles and compares a list of total regular season penalty minutes for both teams then I'm going to have to put this one down as angry paranoid ranting by the team, media, and angry fans.

Better reasons for what's happened:

1) 'Nucks and their fans coasted thru the regular season and for some unknown reason thought that the same thing was going to happen in the first two playoff rounds.
2) 'Nucks #1 goalie panicked and has totally lost his composure; apparently this is infectious because the rest of the team and a huge chunk of the fan base both seem to be following him.
3) Everyone's forgetting that the Hawks were last year's champs, and the former champ never goes down easily.
4) I have no idea why, but everyone's certainly forgotten how much that retarded Torres cheap shot on Seabrook genuinely pissed off the Hawks and lit a major fire inside their locker-room; this won't be the first time, or the last one, that a totally unnecessary bit of goonery totally changed the complexion of a series.

As a Flames fan I know exactly what 'Nucks fans are feeling right now. We've blown so many playoff rounds that it's easy to get angry and start tossing out blame everywhere else except for where it belongs. I can still remember back to 1994, when the Flames blew a series lead to Vancouver and were getting penalized every time a Flames player even got within two feet of the Canuck's net. And I can remember 2004 quite well too, where we actually 'won' the Cup in game 6 at home but, thanks to bad calls by Kerry Fraser (the lifelong bane of the Flames and truly the worst NHL referee of all time) and insufficient video replay evidence, Tampa ended up winning everything. It sucks and it hurts but eventually it has to be acknowledged that a great regular season sometimes doesn't mean that a team is ready for the intensity of the playoffs.

BTW, GO 'Nucks GO!

If you aren't griping about the officiating, you sure as hell didn't watch the same game I did!
The exact same Seabrook type hit on Bieksa - no call. Sticks in the face - no call. Sedin shoved over after the whistle, right in the ref's face - no call.