Why The Fining of John Tortorella For His Comments About The Refereeing in the Winter Classic Is Malarkey

Over 40,000 people trekked to Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia to watch the Winter Classic on January 2nd, and over a million people tuned in on television to watch the game. A lot of people who tuned in also got to witness some questionable calls by the referees in the dying seconds of the 3rd period that to a vast majority of the audience, seemed to be favoring getting the game into overtime.

In the dying seconds, the Philadelphia Flyers pulled goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky for an extra attacker. During the skirmish in the Rangers' zone, Ryan Callahan cleared the puck, and headed to shoot it into the empty net, when he was hooked up by Kimmo Timonen heading for the puck. In the midst of said hook, Callahan briefly took his hand off of his stick to nudge the stick out of the way, without gripping it at all, to protect his face. The referees called coincidental minor penalties on both Timonen for hooking, and Callahan for grabbing the stick. During the 4-on-4, the Flyers pulled their goaltender again to get an extra attacker on the ice, nearly got the puck in, but Ryan McDonagh dove into the crease, and used his hands to dig the puck out which lead to a penalty shot by Danny Briere, that Henrik Lundqvist stopped and the Rangers held onto the lead to a victory. During this entire drama, I was damn near ready to pull my hair out because of the lopsidedness of the calls. I was thinking that the refs were doing it on purpose to favor the home town crowd or the NHL higher-ups to send the game into overtime for higher ratings or some other wild fantasy that ran through my mind. I too questioned the integrity of the calls made on the ice in that final minute, along with everyone else I watched the game with, and at the end of it all, coach John Tortorella made a statement about how he thought that the officiating in the 3rd period was "disgusting," and that maybe the NHL and NBC got together to get the game to overtime.

What John Tortorella did was say what everyone was thinking, only his stage was a bit bigger than all of ours. Obviously, Tortorella was being sarcastic when he made his remarks, but that blew right over the heads of the NHL disciplinarians who issued him a $30,000 fine for his comments. Before his fining, Tortorella went apology crazy and apologized to everyone: the refs, the league, and everyone who might have been involved. His apology shows that he recognized that his comment was misconstrued, and wanted to let all of the parties involved know that he was not accusing anyone. Plus, the people who he said were making the calls, are Coach Tortorella's employers. The NHL who would have any powers over rigging a game like the Winter Classic are the people who sign Tortorella's check every week, so going after them is like biting the hand that feeds you, which is plain dumb. Coach Tortorella has a lot more sense than to whimsically call out the people who run the entire show of hockey for rigging the game to get more ratings, and anyone who believes in the conspiracy behind those calls needs their head examined.

Were the calls bad? Not all of them were. I can understand the Ryan McDonagh penalty shot because there was evidence in the video that he might have corralled the puck with his hands to keep it from going in, but that was after the blown call on Callahan which was the worst call of the entire game apart from the Ryan McDonagh delay-of-game for getting pushed into his own net dislodging it. Had the refs not blown the call on Callahan, he would have gotten the empty net goal, and the game would have been iced for the Rangers and there would have never been a penalty shot for Briere. A simple missed call like that put a victory in the balance for the Rangers, who got the short end of a bad call that could have easily cost them the win which they deserved.

Can you imagine what would have happened had they lost though? I would imagine a firestorm of criticism coming from every media outlet in the hockey world calling for justice on said blown call. Now, does that exclude Tortorella from penalty? A little of yes, and a little of no. While coaches in this league question calls on the ice to the media all the time, none really do it on the stage of the Winter Classic where millions will hear it. That should not make the Winter Classic an untouchable setting for said comments, and I do believe the NHL jumped the gun on a sarcastic remark that got them all hot and bothered and made them look like bad guys.

In the end, this fan is happy. It sucks for Torts, but that's what happens in this world. Not everyone is going to like what you say, and if you say something that someone with power over you doesn't like on a big enough stage, there will be repercussions. But the team who deserved to win did, an apology was made, and we can all get on with our lives now.