![]() ![]() Owners have been laid low financially while thousands and thousands of workers connected to the sport have been without work. Two NHL seasons have been disrupted and cut short by the pandemic. Remember during the 2004-05 lockout when, at Brendan Shanahan’s impetus, the game’s stakeholders gathered to have an open and frank discussion about the state of the game? And remember how, when that lockout ended, the game returned newer, better, faster and ultimately more popular?Īre we not at a similar critical moment in our world? Does Peel’s transgression come at a time when we all might be engaging in a lot of introspection? So why not embrace that even if such self-awareness isn’t really the NHL’s strong suit? Why not take advantage of something like Peel’s comments and subsequent firing and use it to try to make the game better? It merely highlights in an embarrassing manner for the league that the problem exists. So firing Peel hardly solves the problem. We can say with some certainty those thoughts likely cross the minds of referees and linesmen all the time. Maybe the NHL would like to think, or more importantly like the public to think, Peel is an outlier, the only one.īut that would be naïve in the extreme. Or non-call.Īnd let’s also assume that if Peel articulated his motivation for making such an iffy call, it stands to reason he simply gave voice to the motivations that some, maybe many, of his colleagues feel when they approach an NHL game. That at some point and perhaps many points in his career Peel felt he needed to even the refereeing playing field with a call. Let’s assume that when Peel shared during a television timeout after assessing Viktor Arvidsson a minor penalty that he’d been looking for a reason to assess Nashville a penalty he was articulating something that he had felt or acted on before over the course of a career that had spanned more than 1,300 games. This is a great opportunity to ask loudly and publicly some very hard questions about how the game is officiated and how the league, and more importantly the fans, get the best game possible. ![]() If the league has the will and the foresight, this is a grand opportunity to really pull back the covers on critical parts of the game. Because that’s what this moment amounts to. And if that’s all this amounts to, a sacrificial body to appease the masses, well then shame on the NHL for missing a golden opportunity to seize the moment and turn it into something significant and meaningful.
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