Vancouver fans display one of the finest REF YOU SUCK chants, ever.

Can't say too much about the fans outside- but the fans inside rocked the chant!

Proof that NHL officiating is giving the series to Chicago

NHL.com have recently posted an article where Vancouver General Manager Mike Gillis is quoted at length. Gillis has made statements regarding what he views as biased or incorrect officiating in the series between the Vancouver Canucks and the Chicago Blackhawks.

According to Gillis: "we're going to be very hard-pressed to win hockey games if throughout an entire series when the score is tight, (the Blackhawks) get 75 percent more power plays than we do."

He continued: "You look at the game (Sunday) night, you guys all watched it, you don't need me to comment about what occurred in that hockey game. But when you break down the video, there are some extraordinary plays to explain given what's gone on."

"The Torres hit was determined to be an interference call. Their team called for him to be suspended for multiple games, all kinds of people called for him to be suspended for multiple games," Gillis said.

for more on this, go here.


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NHL deals with own referee controversy

Photo by AP

Stephane Auger

A whistleblower

By Scott Conroy
Sunday, January 17, 2010 - Added 1d 1h ago

As someone who can’t figure out why any rational person would find the NBA a more appealing product than the NHL on a nightly basis, I’ve gotten a good laugh as the former has grappled with such public relations disasters as the Tim Donaghy gambling scandal to the “High Noon” hijinks down in Washington with Gilbert Arenas.

But the NHL had its own little integrity-of-the-game issue last week and, though it’s hardly as rancid as the Donaghy mess, it doesn’t smell quite right.

After a Nashville win in Vancouver on Monday, Canucks forward Alex Burrows accused referee Stephane Auger of telling him prior to the game that he planned to get a little payback for Burrows’ supposed embellishment of an injury after a hit in a game between the same two teams on Dec. 8. That hit prompted Auger to slap Predator forward Jerred Smithson with a five-minute major and game misconduct, which was subsequently rescinded by the league when video suggested Burrows was faking it.

There is video evidence of a pregame conversation between Burrows and Auger on Monday night, as well as suspicious third-period diving and interference calls against Burrows, the latter of which roundly has been described as questionable at best. Burrows was in the penalty box when Nashville scored the game-winning goal.

After the game, Burrows aired his version of the story to the media scrum.

“It was personal,” he said. “It started in the warmup before the anthem. The ref came over to me and said I made him look bad on the Smithson hit. He said he was going to get me back tonight and he did his job in the third period.”

For that and other comments, the league tagged Burrows with a $2,500 fine. Auger got no public rebuke. And who knows? Maybe that was the most just outcome possible, though the fine would seem to suggest that the league believes Burrows (who did serve a suspension while in the ECHL for abuse of an official, by the way), is a liar with a vivid imagination.

Now, to digress for a minute, a little give between a player and ref is nothing new. Former referee and NHL player Paul Stewart, now the director of officiating for the ECAC collegiate league, has a lengthy list of NHL All-Stars, from Steve Yzerman to Dennis Savard to Craig Janney, with whom he had run-ins. And he made his share of threats.

“I refereed at least 100 games with Claude Lemieux. That guy should have been the Otis Elevator Man of the Year. Why? He was up, he was down, he was up, he was down,” Stewart said. “Half the time he was down; he’d feel his teeth, try to put on an act for the home crowd. He tried to suck us in. You’d go by him, tell him to get up, call him a phony, whatever. One night I went over to (former Montreal coach Pat) Burns and told him, ‘I’ve had enough of this guy. You either start coaching him or I’m going to ditch him.’ ”

Some might not approve of that approach but, Stewart surmised, a good hockey man would recognize he was giving the team a break by giving a warning, however pointed it may have been.

“You’ve got to temper it with judgment,” Stewart said.

Auger, however, is not accused of making a threat but a promise, and that alleged vow affected the game’s outcome. In what boiled down to a he-said, he-said standoff, league disciplinarian Colin Campbell sided with Auger, at least publicly.

“The National Hockey League will not tolerate the personal nature of the comments Mr. Burrows directed at Referee Auger or the fact that he brought into question the integrity of the official and the game,” Campbell said in a statement released Wednesday.

“We have determined that Mr. Burrows’ account of Referee Auger’s comments to him before the game, and specifically Burrows’ suggestion that these comments indicated bias against the player or the Vancouver team, cannot be substantiated. While Referee Auger engaged the player in a brief conversation prior to the opening faceoff, I firmly believe that nothing inappropriate was said and that Referee Auger’s intentions were beyond reproach.”

Appearing on the NHL Network on Thursday, Campbell, the NHL’s vice president of hockey operations, said that Auger told him he never broached the specific subject of payback, yet, given that the smoking gun conversation was in French, Campbell said there very well could have been a misunderstanding between the ref and Burrows.

A plausible explanation? Maybe. A convenient one? Absolutely.

To read the rest of the article- click here

Canucks' Alexandre Burrows is my hero

McKenzie: The Burrows-Auger saga is going to get messy

Bob McKenzie
1/12/2010 2:57:12 PM

This Alexandre Burrows-Stephane Auger situation is going to get messy. It's the proverbial can of worms for everyone involved – the league, the NHL Officials' association, referee Auger, player Burrows and the entire Vancouver Canucks' organization – and it's a story that is not likely to go away any time soon.

If the events of last night unfolded as Burrows has alleged – and there is plenty of evidence, circumstantial and otherwise – to suggest they did more or less, then the NHL will have no choice but to take some form of disciplinary action against Auger, be it a reprimand, a fine, a suspension or an evaluation that could go into his file and cost him playoff games and/or money along the line or maybe even his job.

And the NHLOA, the refs' and linesmen's union, will no doubt have no choice but to do everything possible to protect Auger, who by the way was the official who assessed Shane Doan a 10-minute misconduct that led to a major brouhaha over whether player uttered a cultural slur.

So you see where this is headed, eh? Nowhere good.

For those who may have missed it, here's the long story-short version of what went down:

In a Dec. 8 game between Vancouver and Nashville, Predator player Jerred Smithson was assessed a five-minute charging major and a game misconduct by Auger for a hit on Burrows. Nashville won the game 4-2, but in the aftermath of the game, the NHL rescinded the major/game misconduct against Smithson because the video evidence strongly suggested Burrows embellished the hit and faked an injury.

Fast forward to last night's game between the same two teams in Vancouver.

Burrows alleges that Auger came up to him in warm-up, before the anthem, and there is video showing the two having a conversation.

''A ref came over to me and he said I made him look bad in Nashville on the Smithson hit and he said he was going to get me back tonight,'' Burrows said after the game.

Auger called a diving penalty on Burrows early in the third period and then called him for an interference penalty in the last five minutes of the third period. Shortly after that, Canuck forward Henrik Sedin was assessed a tripping minor and the Predators scored what turned out to be the game-winning goal in the third period. In the final seconds of the game, Burrows received a 10-minute misconduct from Auger for telling the ref what he thought of him. Burrows, by the way, scored both Canuck goals and came close to getting a third hat trick in four games.

After the game, a distraught Burrows fired both barrels at Auger.

''He got me on the diving call, I didn't think I was diving,'' Burrows said. ''He got me on an interference call that I had no idea how he could call that. It changed the game. It sucks right now for teammates who are battling for 60 minutes to win a hockey game because every two points are so huge, are so important. And because of a guy's ego, it just blows everything out of proportion and the refs – they're making bad calls and the fans are paying for it and we're paying for it.

for the rest of the article- click here