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Gudas has been rendered a non factor due to refs


RonJeremy

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Since so many of Gudas’ heavy  

 , but legal hits are called penalties these days  , it seems like he has stopped hitting completely and is not as effective. He toned it down with the borderline hits , which was a good thing, but they kept calling penalties on the legal hits, so now he doesn’t hit at all. The other thing is , in the old NHL, if you cheapshottted  a player , an enforcer would make you pay the price,  the instigator rule stopped that. Now it’s a complete joke, you hit someone with a perfectly clean hit and his teammate starts a fight with you. This nonsense has to stop. You can take my guy out with a stick to the head and I get an instigator penalty for coming after you. I hit you with a clean check , you come after me and we both 

get 5 minutes

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This is really a shame if true.

 

I mean, Gudas ENTIRE value as a hockey player is based on the fact that he hits like nobody's business, and whether they admit it or not, players worry about a guy like that ready to flatten them into Bisquick pancakes if they get too cute prancing into the offensive zone.

 

Hitting, intimidation, and he DOES have an underrated hockey sense with regards to outlet passes and a decent blue line shot.

And while at times his intelligence regarding when and where to plant someone can be questioned, fact is, he HAS come a long way since his AHL and early Tampa Bay maniac days and has become more of an overall NHL defenseman.

 

But if he is feeling the scrutiny of the NHL, and if indeed the NHL is ready to drop a ban hammer on him because he is stronger and hits harder than most other defensemen, then he might be forced out of the league because they basically are taking away many of his NHL tools.

 

It will be up to Radko to be smart, but that won't help him much if the NHL is already predisposed to finding fault in any hit he puts on players.

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I don't disagree that fear of being tossed from games has lessened his hitting, but I still think he's an effective defender. The problem is, his partner is most definitely NOT, which leaves Gudas guessing on where he needs to be at any given time. 

 

It is a crying shame that he no longer throws a real hit. Was it two games last season he got tossed for throwing hip checks? It's insane.

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Sure do miss the days when you could lay out a guy with a clean hit, and like mentioned above , take the number and blast him back later, too many primadonnas in the league, they whine and cry to the ref,(Crosby the biggest culprit) it's a friggin man's sport if you can't take it , get the puck out you candy ass bitches

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On 3/11/2018 at 12:29 PM, RonJeremy said:

Since so many of Gudas’ heavy  

 , but legal hits are called penalties these days  , it seems like he has stopped hitting completely and is not as effective. He toned it down with the borderline hits , which was a good thing, but they kept calling penalties on the legal hits, so now he doesn’t hit at all. The other thing is , in the old NHL, if you cheapshottted  a player , an enforcer would make you pay the price,  the instigator rule stopped that. Now it’s a complete joke, you hit someone with a perfectly clean hit and his teammate starts a fight with you. This nonsense has to stop. You can take my guy out with a stick to the head and I get an instigator penalty for coming after you. I hit you with a clean check , you come after me and we both 

get 5 minutes

 

I agree with you... BUT the whack to the head... he did that all by himself and frankly it's stuff like that that draws attention and makes his legal hits look all the more illegal.

 

Radko is such an interesting case because he doesn't seem to have a medium setting.  He either doesn't have any impact at all or he absolutely kills a guy.  His hits may be legal, but they're still almost always LETHAL while Most of the rest of the league has figured out how to lay out a hit without being quite so punishing.  

 

Now I know we like punishing hits.  I love them.  But the problem is the league doesn't.   It's just the reality.  And I think the unwritten rule of the league is that "within the rules" doesn't equal "legal" to them anymore.  Especially if you're in Orange and Black.

 

Ultimately, if he can't find a middle ground of just hitting effectively without brutalizing his opponents, I'm not sure what to tell him or the rest of us. It sucks... but I can't figure out why he can't even bump a guy without utterly destroying him. When it comes to physicality, he's either 100% dangerous or completely ineffective.  


WHY CAN'T HE FIGURE IT OUT?!?!

 

 

 

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9 hours ago, RJ8812 said:

The whole "you hit my teammate cleanly, now you have to fight me immediately" BS needs to stop 

 

I think this issue is extremely complicated.  

There are "legal" hits that are still plenty dirty IMHO.

 

is fighting the appropriate reaction?  Probably not.  The Machiavellian in me says to do the same thing to the equivalent player on their team... but what'd that guy specifically do to me, so why am I punishing him?  

 

Still... when Toronto takes Ghost out of your lineup for several weeks and threatens his career with some dirty stuff?  Yeah, I kinda advocate going for Matthews or someone.  Because that hit was friggin' dirty.  Should have been called but was dirty as hell even though the league said it wasn't.  

 

Or if the Penguins crash the net until they break Steve Mason in the last week of the season heading into the playoffs?  Yeah... go run over Fleury/Murray/whoever the hell it was until he breaks too.

 

But it's not so cut and dry... the hit on Patrick that knocked him out of the lineup?  That was clearly just a rookie mistake on his part.  The dude that hurt him really didn't do anything wrong. 

 

Similarly (in the way back machine) The Randy Jones hit on Patrice Bergeron all those years ago... I still don't think Jones did anything terribly wrong.  He clearly wasn't trying to board him or cause any injury and was just finishing a check.  Yes, he gave him a little push and that made all the difference to the league I'm sure, but that wasn't the problem because there was almost no force associated with the shove.  The real problem was that Bergeron (like Patrick) put himself in an incredibly dangerous position for no apparent reason as if he expected Jones to acrobatically dive out of the way to avoid him.  Yet inevitably, Jones got suspended and those Flyers got tagged with the inevitable bad reputation for a while.  

 

It's just an incredibly complicated issue and there's no good solution IMHO.  It would help if the league held every player on every team to the exact same standard and didn't cherry pick this guy for that hit and NOT that guy for this hit.  But even if they did it perfectly, it would still be tricky.  

 

 

 

 

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18 hours ago, Pucked in the head said:

Sure do miss the days when you could lay out a guy with a clean hit, and like mentioned above , take the number and blast him back later, too many primadonnas in the league, they whine and cry to the ref,(Crosby the biggest culprit) it's a friggin man's sport if you can't take it , get the puck out you candy ass bitches

 

Honestly, I used to get mad about this, but at this point I'm really only mad about the inconsistency and how relentlessly unfair it is and how it can seriously affect the outcome of a game or a series or a season even.  

 

The players don't even know what the rules are minute to minute and they complain about it all the time and NOTHING is ever done about it and I don't know why.

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16 hours ago, King Knut said:

The players don't even know what the rules are minute to minute and they complain about it all the time and NOTHING is ever done about it and I don't know why.

 

imo, it's because the rules themselves are not designed to provide hard lines between legal and not.  my favorite example:

 

42.1 Charging - A minor or major penalty shall be imposed on a player or goalkeeper who skates or jumps into, or charges an opponent in any manner.
 

Charging shall mean that the actions of a player or goalkeeper who, as a result of distance traveled, shall violently check and opponent in any manner. A "charge" may be the result of a check into the boards, into the goal frame or in open ice.

 

there is nothing specific there at all.  "in any manner" means literally any contact could be viewed as a charge.  "as a result of distance traveled," and "violently" are the only qualifiers.  it doesn't even specify that the contact has to be intentional.  there are, of course, a series of "unwritten" guidelines for the call, x number of steps, leaving your skates, blind-siding, has to have been intentional, etc....but those are, well, unwritten.  not hard and fast, and subject to different interpretations and thresholds depending on a lot of external factors.

 

thing is, hockey does not lend itself to hard and fast rules.  it's too fast, and players' control of themselves and their equipment too vague for that.  it's where you end up with dumb things like goals being waved off from skates in the crease and high sticks a half inch above the logo.  going frame-by-frame through video to see whether or not some dude's skate left the ice for a micro-second misses the entire point and is useless.

 

the other thing is, from the vagueness of the rulebook, you could watch a game with your best friend who happens to root for the other team, and the two of you will disagree on 75% of the calls made and not made.  the anti-flyers bias that is talked about so much here exists in ALL fan bases for ALL teams.  vague rules plus confirmation bias = everyone thinks the refs are out to get them.  don't really think there is anything to be done about that, shy of officially making the NHL a no-contact league where literally everything is called.   

 

 

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44 minutes ago, aziz said:

 

imo, it's because the rules themselves are not designed to provide hard lines between legal and not.  my favorite example:

 

42.1 Charging - A minor or major penalty shall be imposed on a player or goalkeeper who skates or jumps into, or charges an opponent in any manner.
 

Charging shall mean that the actions of a player or goalkeeper who, as a result of distance traveled, shall violently check and opponent in any manner. A "charge" may be the result of a check into the boards, into the goal frame or in open ice.

 

there is nothing specific there at all.  "in any manner" means literally any contact could be viewed as a charge.  "as a result of distance traveled," and "violently" are the only qualifiers.  it doesn't even specify that the contact has to be intentional.  there are, of course, a series of "unwritten" guidelines for the call, x number of steps, leaving your skates, blind-siding, has to have been intentional, etc....but those are, well, unwritten.  not hard and fast, and subject to different interpretations and thresholds depending on a lot of external factors.

 

thing is, hockey does not lend itself to hard and fast rules.  it's too fast, and players' control of themselves and their equipment too vague for that.  it's where you end up with dumb things like goals being waved off from skates in the crease and high sticks a half inch above the logo.  going frame-by-frame through video to see whether or not some dude's skate left the ice for a micro-second misses the entire point and is useless.

 

the other thing is, from the vagueness of the rulebook, you could watch a game with your best friend who happens to root for the other team, and the two of you will disagree on 75% of the calls made and not made.  the anti-flyers bias that is talked about so much here exists in ALL fan bases for ALL teams.  vague rules plus confirmation bias = everyone thinks the refs are out to get them.  don't really think there is anything to be done about that, shy of officially making the NHL a no-contact league where literally everything is called.   

 

 

 

 

Going in reverse order here:  The reason that I actually do believe in the anti-flyers bias is because by and large, I've seen it disappear.  I know I invoked it as an aside, and I do think it plays a minor part in games from time to time, most likely depending on the ref.  But There were a crop of refs that were brutal on the Flyers for a long time (My theory is that they grew up watching the Bullies and thus they made assumptions) and they've by and large retired and in recent years, I simply haven't seen the same audaciously biased calls.

 

The league and the refs do have prejudices though and it usually comes in terms of ideas like, "well this team is excellent so they probably got interfered with if they didn't make the play" and "This team isn't quite so good or is playing beyond their abilities right now, so they probably did interfere in order to shut that play down... even though I couldn't see from where I was."  Stuff like that.  

 

There's also player prejudices... that goes up and down.  But Radko straight up has a reputation and has been suspended for clearly legal and non-dirty hits that were just very very hard.  

 

I think the main problem that the refs and this league are up agains--and right now it's more a problem between the league and the players than it is for the fans--is inconsistency.  It's driving the players and the coaches nuts right now.  They're complaining about it more and more openly.  

 

We've seen it sixteen different ways.  And it's coming to a head in the goaltender interference category of calls more than anywhere lately... and that means it's not just on the refs but on the league as well.  

 

But interference and charging have long been in this wheel house as well.  What's good for one guy is a suspension for another.  There's no parity, there's no consistency which is as much about safety as it is about fairness and sportsmanship.  The players don't care so much that it costs them a goal or a game here or there (they do, but that's not the main thing).  The main thing is that they simply don't know how to play the game.  They don't know if what they're doing is legal or if they're going to be put in the box for it.

 

In years past, you had a lot of players out there who were just trying to hurt your guys.  Kasparitus and Domi were two of my most hated guys in the 90's and early 00's.  This goes back to good old days of hockey.  The Bullies didn't invent it, but they did perfect it.

 

I don't see that as much.  I don't think players are trying to hurt each other like they used to... with a few exceptions.  Now it's more likely that if a player delivers a dangerous blow that injures a guy like Ghost got hurt, that player delivering the blow didn't think he was trying to get away with something, he thought it was a clean legal play... and the league backs him up... so what's the next guy supposed to think?

 

So while they can't write hard and fast rules, the refs and the league can police each other.  They can punish refs for making poor decisions, and they can institute some friggin' parity in the office of player safety (which is the 3rd biggest sham in sports after the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Penguins IMHO).  There likely won't be any way to make restitution to the aggrieved teams after the games are over, but they have to start being more open with themselves and the league at large about their own inadequacies and failings. 

 

They're never going to get it right if they don't start acknowledging that they sometimes get it wrong and it affects games.  

 

 

 

 

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59 minutes ago, King Knut said:

They're never going to get it right if they don't start acknowledging that they sometimes get it wrong and it affects games.

 

the counter point, i think, is that the times where they have acknowledged getting things systemically wrong is where they've gone too far the other way, calling back goals because a skate was an inch inside the blue paint, or the off-wing forward was 3 inches offside.  they've done "if you can see numbers, it's a dirty hit", and enforced that for a while, until it became obvious that slapping down rigid determinants overly generalized a fluid game that exists mostly in shades of grey.  "if there is blood, it's automatically 4 minutes."  "an instigator in the last 5 minutes of a game is a suspension."  "touching the goalie inside the crease is interference."  

 

then add in players gaming the rules, be it by diving or by "using" the rules to their advantage (like, turning to face the boards to become "uncheckable"), and you have a thing that refuses consistency.  if you draw clear and specific lines, you have buffalo upset about the silly skate-in-the-crease rule and players suspended for inadvertent things.  if you allow interpretation and in-the-moment judgement from the refs, you have extreme frustration when the on-ice interpretation and judgement differs from the viewer's.

 

i don't think there is a perfect, don't even think there is a "good enough".  ice hockey's RNG.

 

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2 minutes ago, aziz said:

 

the counter point, i think, is that the times where they have acknowledged getting things systemically wrong is where they've gone too far the other way, calling back goals because a skate was an inch inside the blue paint, or the off-wing forward was 3 inches offside.  they've done "if you can see numbers, it's a dirty hit", and enforced that for a while, until it became obvious that slapping down rigid determinants overly generalized a fluid game that exists mostly in shades of grey.  "if there is blood, it's automatically 4 minutes."  "an instigator in the last 5 minutes of a game is a suspension."  "touching the goalie inside the crease is interference."  

 

 

You know the calling back of goals for off sides is tricky.  Because I think it's stupid and I hate it... but then I remember that the Flyers would probably have won another cup if they could have done this in 1980.  

 

["if there is blood, it's automatically 4 minutes."  "an instigator in the last 5 minutes of a game is a suspension."  "touching the goalie inside the crease is interference." ]  Of these, only the blood is the last thing I see regularly implemented.  The Penguins won a cup because the instigator rule was tossed out the window (It was actually in the rule book that the commissioner could toss it out the window if he wanted).  

 

The goalie thing is actually one I agree with.  I actually greatly preferred the rules as they were in the 80's and 90's with the exception of calling back a goal if any part of the player was in the crease.  I think there's way too much contact with goalies and the whole treatment of goalies is way to cavalier and it ends up getting goalies hurt way too much.  And I'm not saying that because the Flyers goalies always get hurt.  I'm saying that because it's true.   Goalies aren't exactly like Punters in the NFL, but they're not completely different.  They can't brace themselves for hits or defend themselves from even the most incidental contact and still do their jobs and it's not right to expect them to.  As things are now, they're continually being forced to choose between protecting themselves and making a save.  

 

Even on breakaways, players will skate head on into a goalie and the goalie knows there is no assurance the guy won't crash into him.  We all assume he''ll stop or maneuver out of the way, but there's no real reason for him not to as it's no longer against the rules to make contact with the goalie.  

 

I think you should be able to get as close as you can to the paint to make a screen and I think if you get shoved into the paint or the goalie by the defender then that's not a penalty and any resulting goal should count.  I believe you should be allowed to go into the paint to retrieve a puck or whack it home, but I believe the crease is NOT open ice and if a goalie tries to make a play and even if he initiates contact with YOU while you're in the paint, no goal should be allowed in that case.  

 

Long and short, you should be allowed into the crease as long as you don't make any contact at all of any kind with the goalie.  If you do though even if he's making contact with you, there's no goal.  If you initiate it with him, it should be a penalty, goal or not.  

 

I think this is important.  The rules aren't written that differently from this, they're just much more permissive of contact with the goalie when there's no shot coming or goal at stake, but I don't think it should matter.  Either way though, the league and the refs are not calling it nearly as cut and dry.   It's a problem and frankly, I know they've weakened the goalie protections to increase goals, but frankly, no one likes to see those kinds of goals.  They're boring as hell and ugly.  

 

2 minutes ago, aziz said:

then add in players gaming the rules, be it by diving or by "using" the rules to their advantage (like, turning to face the boards to become "uncheckable"), and you have a thing that refuses consistency.  if you draw clear and specific lines, you have buffalo upset about the silly skate-in-the-crease rule and players suspended for inadvertent things.  if you allow interpretation and in-the-moment judgement from the refs, you have extreme frustration when the on-ice interpretation and judgement differs from the viewer's.

 

i don't think there is a perfect, don't even think there is a "good enough".  ice hockey's RNG.

 

 

 

Players gaming the rules has peaks and valleys.  The Penguins in Crosby's early years destroyed the game of Hockey with this in my opinion.  It's barely recovered, but has gotten much better.  Their go to was to hold the defender's stick and skate away to draw a hooking or an interference penalty.  It was AMAZING BAD ACTING, but it almost always worked and their PP was so good that it won them a cup.  

 

It seemed like the league eventually decided to stop buying into it and when that eventually lost Bylsma his job in Pittsburgh, the penguins got better at not doing that.  Lately, they've been back and forth a bit.  

 

This was a key to success for a while in the NHL though.  The Blackhawks were champions of this in 2010, which is really friggin' pathetic because the Flyers were literally starting a minor league goalie against them and they still needed to pull that crap to win.  Yet there they were, regularly getting Pronger and Coburn sent to the box for the terrible crime of having their sticks held by Blackhawks.  

 

Today, diving seems to be the method of choice.  It's getting bad too.  I see Flyers doing it too and I don't like it... but sometimes you gotta fight fire with fire.  Diving can be a tough call too because when we watch these things in slow motion, they look awful, but at game speed, it can be very deceptive.  

 

I do not want the NHL turning into FIFA futbol where the most over the top actors (looking at you Italy) get all the advantages.  

 

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33 minutes ago, King Knut said:

Today, diving seems to be the method of choice.  It's getting bad too.  I see Flyers doing it too and I don't like it... but sometimes you gotta fight fire with fire.  Diving can be a tough call too because when we watch these things in slow motion, they look awful, but at game speed, it can be very deceptive. 

 

personally, i would vote for after-the-fact suspensions for diving.  if a dive occurs during a game, and is NOT caught by the refs (as you say, at game speed it can be really really hard to tell, whereas slowed video makes things clear), AND the dive is unquestionable, the NHL should release a narrated video pointing out the dive, and a 1 game suspension handed down. loudly and publicly.  make it a weekly feature that fans will want to see, but that players won't want to star in.  and ONLY 100% obvious dives, nothing that allows for any "maybe".  but embarrass the crap out of the guy.

 

dives like this:

 

 

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2 hours ago, aziz said:

 

personally, i would vote for after-the-fact suspensions for diving.  if a dive occurs during a game, and is NOT caught by the refs (as you say, at game speed it can be really really hard to tell, whereas slowed video makes things clear), AND the dive is unquestionable, the NHL should release a narrated video pointing out the dive, and a 1 game suspension handed down. loudly and publicly.  make it a weekly feature that fans will want to see, but that players won't want to star in.  and ONLY 100% obvious dives, nothing that allows for any "maybe".  but embarrass the crap out of the guy.

 

dives like this:

 

 

 

Yeah... I actually don't agree with that.  That is clearly embellishment on Carcillo's part, but he did take a stick to the chest or neck and that's actually still illegal.  This is the rare instance where they both should have gone (I typically don't appreciate when a guy gets sent to the box and his victim gets sent for embellishment, but when the shoe fits...)

 

The problem with seeing things in slow motion for me is almost the opposite of what you're saying.  I think every penalty that involves a slash or a high stick looks like embellishment in slow motion.  It takes your reflexes a moment to realize you've been whacked.  Often times a normal flinch or recoil will look like obvious embellishment when slowed down to 1/3 speed.  

 

I don't think you need added punishment, I think the refs just need to be notified and they need to then treat that particular player like the boy who cried wolf.  Next time he goes down in a heap... don't give him the call.  He'll learn eventually.  

 

If they can decide amongst their ranks that Radko is the devil and tries to kill someone every time he bumps them, then they can also decide amongst themselves that Dan Carcillo is a POS drama queen/psychopath who doesn't get indulged and has to shed some real blood next time to actually get the call.   

 

It's the only way to really stop them.  

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57 minutes ago, King Knut said:

I think the refs just need to be notified and they need to then treat that particular player like the boy who cried wolf.  Next time he goes down in a heap... don't give him the call.

 

except here you are actively calling for biased reffing based on reputation rather than the play in front of them.  this thread is about how that's a bad thing, isn't it?  it's the exact opposite of consistent and fair refereeing.

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2 minutes ago, aziz said:

 

except here you are actively calling for biased reffing based on reputation rather than the play in front of them.  this thread is about how that's a bad thing, isn't it?  it's the exact opposite of consistent and fair refereeing.

 

Not in my opinion. Most of my other reputation based comments have to do with suspensions and Gudas which has little to do with the refs.  I don't think a player should get suspended for diving. 

 

It's all a matter of nuance, which I know isn't your favorite.

Essentially the league has to figure out ways to make things more consistent.  I'm not even sure the word Fair is appropriate to use here.  And frankly, I think there's a difference between a guy gaining a "reputation" for dirty hits and a guy gaining a "reputation" for diving.  In one instance, the guy literally can't correct the sort of play that earned him his reputation and still play his position.  In the other instance the result of his "reputation" is... 

 

Not giving a proven diver the automatic call next time around is quite a bit different than automatically giving Gudas a suspension because he dared to make contact with another player. --AND NO, I don't include whacking a guy in the head with his stick... that was clearly a suspendable offense and frankly, he probably got off easy for that one.  

 

Only one of those two actually involves the refs.  I think it's an ebb and flow sort of thing... refs usually figure stuff out.  They don't fall for the holding of the stick to fake being hooked much anymore. It just takes time and I think they need to figure out a way to accelerate that process. There's always going to be something players are trying to get away with.  It tends to go in trends.  Right now, I feel like I see a lot of flailing and flopping, but I have to admit it doesn't bother me all THAT much.  It's problematic, but I'm far more concerned about the messed up and inconsistent goalie interference calls and the non calls on clearly illegal head hits (like on Ghost).  

 

If your stick comes close to hitting a guy in the face, but doesn't... your stick was too high and you got lucky... if he dives and turns that into a PP for his team, that's unsportsmanlike and crappy, but it's not as unfair as drawing a hooking call by holding a dude's stick IMHO.  In the latter, the fake victim is actually committing the penalty.  In the former, the fake "perpetrator" actually did something wrong, but just didn't hurt anyone.  Anyway, whatever.  

 

Anyway, it's all probably moot.  The long and short is Hagg didn't do anything wrong.  Rust didn't dive... he just endangered himself and ended up getting hurt.  The same way Patrick did and IMHO Bergeron all those years ago.  

 

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