I was talking to Bob Chase and Komets PR director Chuck Bailey before the game about the difference in officiating this weekend and someone, I wish I remembered who, came up with the thing that summed it all up. ``There's calling penalties and then there's calling a hockey game. Anybody who can skate and blow a whistle can call penalties, but can they call a game?'' That makes all the sense in the world.
Which kind of leads me to coach Pat Bingham's post-game press conference. Here are some excerpts:
``The guy hit Hansen from behind and three guys don't see it... I have a problem with that. I don't want to harp on officiating, but there are some things that are considered the dirtiest plays in hockey, hitting from behind, the leg check that happened to Goodwin, and hits to the head when you leave your feet (like with Voorhees). It sure looked to me like the guy who stepped up on... Sure, he was in a vulnerable position. He was reaching for the puck and everything, but from my perspective on the bench, the guy left his feet to hit him in the head, and he literally went overtop of him. I would think if he didn't leave his feet he would have stood him up or bowled him over, but he went ove the top.
``They're not going to see everything, but I do want them to enforce those... along with the new agenda of the hooking and holding and all that stuff to clean up the game and open it up more. When you do open up the game, you saw it tonight with big open ice hits as a result. People who are critical of new rules or whatever it really prevents you from holding people up and the whole idea was to stop them from running the crap out of you. I think we made the mistake a few too many times of throwing passes up the middle, trying to get cute, and their D guys took every opportunity to step up in the neutral zone and we paid the price for that. Like I said, it's up to the referee to take care of checks from behind, hits from behind, leg checks when you're trying to take somebody's knee out and hits to the head, jumping to take a guy's head off.''
Bingham also heaped praise on players such as David Hukalo, Pascal Morency, Martin Gascon and, Kevin Hansen for doing the little things better such as aggressive forechecking, hustle and getting the puck deep on line changes.
``All the other guys who have scored a lot of points know what they are doing for the team,'' Bingham said.
