Saturday, February 2nd, 2008 by Adam Wagner
Jarkko Ruutu reveals problems with NHL officiating
When Jarkko Ruutu received two majors against Atlanta - one for a kneeing that barely even happened and one for a fight where Ruutu did not throw a punch - he became involved in a small scale officiating controversy for the second time this season. The first came on Thanksgiving Day against Ottawa when Ruutu received two diving penalties in the same period. Ruutu’s two sets of run-ins reveal major flaws in NHL officiating that must be addressed sooner or later.
Addressing the situations of Wednesday first, the call involving Kovalchuk was ludicrous. Ruutu’s hit was clean and in the course of the game. Kovalchuk (seen at the left in a kilt . . . 
what kind of a man wears a glorified skirt?) would not even have been hurt if he had taken the hit like a hockey player instead of tried to dodge it. In dodging it, he left his knee behind and caused the knee-on-knee contact that injured him instead of the relatively safe body-on-body contact. Ruutu’s hit was in no way, shape, or form an attempt to knee Kovalchuk but instead gamesmanship in the form of an attempted act of intimidation against the opponent’s best player. If every team gets away with it against Sidney Crosby, why don’t the Penguins ever get away with it?
Listen to these idiotic Thrashers announcers go off on this. These are two of the worst, most unbalanced commentators I have ever heard. Notable highlights of the video: Ruutu not thinking he would receive a penalty but instead receiving two, the announcers claiming that a thud sound heard on the video was the two knees colliding when it was actually just Ruutu running into the board, and the idiot announcers claiming that the hit “has MCL written all over it.”
Secondly, the call shows the NHL’s propensity to protect its stars, an annoying habit over the years. The NHL has always wanted to have marketable stars and, therefore, pulled what the NBA did with Dwayne Wade and protected them with penalties in an effort to
boost their performances and the league’s excitement as a whole. The goal is not to cause powerplays or anything like that, but instead to put out the message to not take a potential penalty against star players, therefore allowing them to take greater risks than they would be able to if someone were closely and physically marking them. Considering that Kovalchuk had just had an article published in ESPN the Magazine, there is a potential direct correlation between the NHL’s protectionist strategy and the penalties against Ruutu. (Wait, what am I saying? In two or three years, Sidney Crosby will draw a penalty if he so much as breathed on . . . We hope.)
Lastly, the fighting major was absolutely ridiculous. A fight has to be a fight for a fighting major to be called, meaning that both men actually have to be fighting, something that Ruutu obviously wanted no part of considering that he did not throw a punch during the fight.
These penalties would probably not have been severe, however, if Ruutu had not already established a reputation as a dirty player. The moment of Ruutu’s achieving that status may have come on Thanksgiving when he received two diving calls, two very questionable diving calls, in the same period against the Ottawa Senators. For a ref to call diving, a penalty that could end up in sanctioning from the league, he must be absolutely sure and even almost looking for it, meaning that someone was already suspicious of Ruutu. It is difficult to believe that any player, much less one of Ruutu’s style of play (physical, tough, gritty, all that good stuff) would be a diver and even more difficult to believe that he would be dumb enough to do it twice in one period.
If the NHL truly wants to turn itself around, it needs to stop being so idiotic on some officiating decisions and instead make the correct call at all times instead of factoring manufactured reputations, importance to the league’s marketing campaign, and other idiotic factors. The quality of play should always be the highest concern and, unfortunately, it is not necessarily the main one for the NHL right now. That needs to change.
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