OK, about those penalties...
Randy Carlyle confirmed what has been on the mind of Ducks fans since ... well, maybe since the Randy Carlyle era began.
"To some
degree," he said, "I think the reputation we have historically is hurting us in these
situations."
Case in point: Less than 10 seconds left in the game, Ducks skating 6-on-5, a centering pass comes right into the wheelhouse of 25-goal scorer Ryan Getzlaf. Everyone crowds the crease, elbows fly, players fall, Geztlaf misses the puck and the whistle everyone is waiting for never comes. What followed were more elbows, more shoving, then the horn to signal the end of the game.
"Embarrassing, to say the
least," Getzlaf said. "It was a great opportunity in the slot. If the guy doesn't take my stick
and I fall on my back, and just doesn't happen that way ... it's frustrating
because it's an opportunity that's created through hard work. And we're not
able to capitalize on it because of a lack of a call."
Critics would be correct to point out that this is Getzlaf's opinion. The one quantifiable fact that bugs Carlyle is that, despite his team playing as well as it has all year, it has enjoyed just three power-play chances to the Sharks' 10 in two games this weekend. The sequence at the end of Sunday's game was sort of the tip of the iceberg.
"We're not saying we haven't
committed fouls," Carlyle said. "When we played in the offensive zone for the number of minutes
we played, and watched what other teams do to defend our players, if we do the
same thing it doesn't seem to be an equal playing field at times. But that's
perception, and they're in position on the ice and all those things. We take
that into consideration."
Ducks captain Scott Niedermayer, who has seen plenty of referees in his 17-year career, went so far as to say "I don't know if the refs
were out there at the end."
Teemu Selanne and Andrew Ebbett rarely lose their cool, but they felt slighted enough to join in an eight-player scrum that netted 64 minutes of penalties with 0:00 on the clock Sunday. Both Ebbett and Selanne received misconducts, along with San Jose's Jonathan Cheechoo and Marc-Eduoard Vlasic, who leveled Getzlaf to the ice with a blow to his back as time expired.
It goes without saying that when you feel you should get a call, and you don't, emotions tend to rise.
"Well, it's amazing when you
go into a game and you're always trying to preach discipline. We preach, preach,
preach, preach, preach," Carlyle said. "Were we guilty of some penalties? Yes we were. We made
some poor judgment with the cross-check, the one retaliation penalty Wisniewski
took. You can't defend that.
"But when you see the calls that go against your
hockey club, from a standpoint of making a body check or stick lateral into the
hands, stick between the legs, the interference that's not called, that's where
the frustration level goes up with your players."
About J.P.
J.P. Hoornstra has been covering the Anaheim Ducks since 2007. Eight months after the University of Wisconsin won its third NCAA hockey championship, he was born in a frigid Madison winter. He betrayed his blue-blooded beginnings by graduating from UCLA in 2003, and welcomes any and all dialogue on the finer points of hockey.
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