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CCHA referees eat their own poo for money
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Brian

1/29/2010 – Michigan 2-ish, Michigan State 3-ish – 14-12-1, 9-9-1-0 CCHA
1/30/2010 – Michigan 5, Michigan State 4 – 15-12-1, 10-9-1-0 CCHA

image The one that counted

I feel kind of bad that when you google former CCHA referee Kevin Langseth's name the first three hits are:

  • A post on this blog titled "People Better At Their Jobs Than Kevin Langseth" featuring Stephen A. Smith, Carrot Top, the FEMA director during Hurricane Katrina, William Henry Harrison and, most lethally, Nickelback.
  • A duplicate of that post with some useless html doohickeys on the end.
  • A duplicate of that post from the Notre Dame message board that reposts my RSS feed in full.

Thanks to me, Langseth is in need of some serious online brand management. Then I go back and click the link to the Yost Built post which I let stand as explanation and the red mist descends and all I remembered is mustachioed walrus incompetence and I shake my head. That post came in the aftermath of a game against Ohio State in which 1) an OSU player kicked a goal in* and 2) a goal that banked in off Louie Caporusso's chest was inexplicably disallowed by Langseth despite the fact that there was a senior official in an excellent spot to make a call. Michigan lost by a goal. It was the second important game that year—a game against Notre Dame was the first— in which Michigan had lost by a goal in a game where two blatantly incorrect decisions to allow or disallow goals had gone against them.

Langseth hasn't been seen around Yost this fall; I assume he decided having rabid bloggers seriously damage his online brand wasn't worth it and is now in the nascent stages of a lucrative career selling mustache grooming accessories. The senior official in an excellent spot was Matt Shegos.

Hey, did anything happen this weekend?

So now Michigan has a man-advantage with just over two minutes to go and a chance to pull off a huge comeback on the road. Just after the penalty expired, Chris Brown was standing in the slot. The puck hit him and bounced down, through the legs of Drew Palmisano, and into the net. Like, straight through the legs of Palmisano. We're not talking pinballing. We're not talking the puck died between his legs but was still loose and someone jammed it in. It hit Chris Brown, bounced down, went right through Palmisano into the net.

Shegos somehow missed this and blew the play dead within milliseconds of the puck going underneath Palmisano. The whistle may not have gone until the puck was in the net (I'm not sure), but thanks to the most retarded rule in sports--the play is dead when it's dead in the referee's mind, not when he blows the whistle--you can't review it.

Son of a.

What's the story of the weekend when Michigan claws back from 3-0 down to tie and manages to blow its own 3-0 lead only to charge back with a season-rescuing win at Joe Louis? "Hey, maybe we can do this thing." What's the story now? Yost Built, let your graphic stylings roam free!

CCHA-football That's inescapable. Michigan split the weekend and ended up dropping a slot in the pairwise. If we're looking at RPI, as we usually do this far out, the #14 team has a 0.5385. Here's what they have to do to approach that:

image

Win seven and a half of nine.

I don't even know what to say. Shegos is clearly the best ref in the league. He still made a huge, game changing error that was so far beyond plausible that I'd rather have the rotating cast of drafted linesmen and guys I've never seen before—the pool Langseth was taken from—in charge.

*(Since this rule changes every two months and is different in every league across the continent, let me clarify how egregious this was: at this moment in history the NCAA rule on kicking the puck in was "anything that touches an offensive player's skate and goes into the net as a result is disallowed." Intent, kicking motions, all that stuff: irrelevant. Skate –> net –> disallowed.)

Other items:

Holy God was Michigan bad on Friday. Even getting in a position to tie that game was a minor miracle after two and a half periods had yielded maybe three or four scoring chances and probably double or triple that number for Michigan State. It was the reverse of the Ferris weekend, where Michigan played an excellent game Friday and a totally gross one Saturday. The Saturday Ferris and Friday State games were identical down to the final-ish score and the late, ultimately unsuccessful (-ish) Michigan comeback.

Hogan's save percentage speaks for itself. I've been arguing with people about how much culpability Bryan Hogan has for Michigan's crappy record all year, and I think the soft shortie against Ferris and the fat rebounds he kicked out all weekend against State are evidence enough that the reason Hogan has a .902 save percentage—54th nationally of 77 qualifying goalies—is mostly that he's not playing well.

The other idea was that Michigan gives up a small quantity of high quality shots. That may have some truth to it, but every study that serious hockey bloggers have undertaken suggests that relative save percentage is a seriously meaningful way to compare goalies, and Hogan is not doing well in that.

Persons of note. I don't think Chris Brown's at the point where he could pull a Pacioretty and leave just as he turned into a ninja, but I am a little concerned the NHL will look at his corner-friendly frame and willingness to take a beating in front of the net and scoop him up before his time. Except—hey—he's a Coyotes draft pick. The 'Yotes are either cheap or patient or wise or all three and have left their last three Michigan draft picks in school for all four years. That might not be a huge surprise with Kevin Porter or Chad Kolarik, both mid-round picks, but Chris Summers was a first-rounder. First round picks who play four years at Michigan are rare indeed.

Anyway, the reason to fret is that Brown's been the most effective freshman forward on the team in a way unfamiliar to Michigan fans: by being huge and ornery. The last Wolverine to score so many dirty crease goals was Brandon Kaleniecki. Kaleniecki was a highly effective player over the course of his career at Michigan despite not having the talent Brown does—Kal was never drafted and never made it out of the ECHL post-college—and a huge version of him seems like a nice player to have around for four years. He's already displayed more scoring touch than Eric Nystrom ever did, if only because he'll put his nose in wherever it needs to go and is handy with a deflection.

Summers, meanwhile, finally put his speed to good use on a rush that got AJ Treais an easy tip-in goal. I don't think he's lived up to expectations as a senior captain—he's been good, but seems far short of the All-American level you'd expect a senior first-round pick would reach.

Weekly Oh My God, Are We Going To Miss The Tourney update was actually covered above in the midst of near-weekly If I Was As Bad As My Job As CCHA Referees Are I Would Be Drew Sharp rant: Michigan's split with Michigan State did zero for them. They are basically where they were before the Ferris State series with four fewer opportunities to drag themselves out of the muck.

This week: must sweep BGSU in the weird split series and a win over Wisconsin would be a huge help.

Comments

Wolverine In Exile

February 1st, 2010 at 12:54 PM ^

"ccha referees eat their own poo for money" Summary from this weekend: - Inconsistent effort - Hoagie =/= Montoya - Saturday may have saved season - Need huge week with BGSU sweep and Wiscy win outdoors - Even then, need big CCHA tourney run (maybe to finals) And most importantly: DON'T BLOW YOUR FUCKING WHISTLE UNTIL A PLAY IS COMPLETELY OVER DIPSHIT!!!!!!!

Joined: 11/08/2008

MGoPoints: 10788

Elise

February 1st, 2010 at 3:30 PM ^

Note: I didn't see the play in question on Friday, so don't take this as a direct commentary on this particular play. I've reffed games just up to the Bantam levels, and I can unfortunately attest to the difficulty of making the kind of call people are going nuts about. When you see a goalie fall on a puck, you have a very short time to make a difficult decision. If you call it too quickly, you wind up with the potential for a legit goal being called off. If you wait, then there is a risk of the offense taking dangerous runs at the goalie. The risk and the speed with which you have to make the call only go up with the level, so in all honesty it's unreasonable to expect a referee to be 100% on that call all the time. Pucks disappear, and you're expected to err on the side of blowing the play dead instead of letting it go. As for the "most retarded rule in sports," would you perhaps prefer they wait until the whistle hits the lips and the breath is allowed to escape? This is completely silly. I'll grant you that D-I refs are pretty well on top of their game, but they can only be so superhuman. It takes time for them to register the situation, move their hand to their lips, and for the breath to escape. If the play were dead as soon as the whistle blew, the next qualm would be that the refs aren't blowing plays dead fast enough. The response to that is quicker whistles and on occasion, even WORSE decisions than you would have had to begin with. As much as it pains me to say this, there isn't a better way to run things than the way they are now. There's no way to computerize the covering of a puck or retroactively say the play wasn't dead. Occasional human error is unfortunately a fact of life that you have to deal with when it comes to goalies freezing the puck. In this case it was probably a matter of a referee losing sight of the puck in a way that normally would result in a whistle and making the decision to end the play, thus removing the possibility of crease chaos during the several seconds it would take to determine the exact location of the puck.

Joined: 07/02/2008

MGoPoints: 2251

AeroSteve

February 1st, 2010 at 4:01 PM ^

I was just about to say, the examples listed above come from the backside ref making a call when the ref in better position let the play go. I am a goal keep myself and take offense to slow whistles. I understand the need to get them called quickly, but that doesn't mean the high side guy should be blowing it dead constantly.

Joined: 02/19/2009

MGoPoints: 56

JustGoBlue

February 1st, 2010 at 4:11 PM ^

want that they wait until they raise the whistle to their lips and let breath escape from their mouths before the play is dead. It should take all of a second. If that second makes a difference, then they shouldn't have intended they play to die that second earlier anyways. The play isn't PHYSICALLY dead until the whistle sounds anyways, so it's not like it stops a couple more whacks at the goalie/puck, in fact it generally takes a little after the whistle for everything to stop in that situation, so how does the play being dead earlier than anybody, except the ref, knows it's dead help anything? Also, how inconsistent is that rule? It only applies when a goal is scored between "intent" to blow the whistle and the actual blowing of the whistle. If the play is dead when the ref thinks it's dead, then EVERY TIME a whistle is blown, that ref needs to think back to how much time it took between intending the play to be dead and the play being dead. I don't care if it's 19:53 left in the first period, if you're blowing a whistle, you better add back the .4 seconds, or whatever it may be that the play was dead for. I realize this is nearly impossible. And can we talk about subjectivity? How much more subjective than "It's not a goal, because I THOUGHT no goal" can you get? Maybe you don't watch the Wings, but there was a goal this year, during one of their games against Dallas, when the ref must have lost sight of the puck. A little later, the puck is in the net. Nobody knows where it is. Several seconds after the puck is in the net, the whistle sounds. No goal, the play was dead in the ref's mind. Obviously, this is one isolated incident, admittedly when goals are called off because of this it's generally in the realm of milliseconds before the audible whistle, but that's just absurd. There was a good deal of whacking between when the play was "Dead" and the play was dead. I don't understand why a ref would need to blow the whistle earlier, blow it when you intend to blow it and if in the second it takes to blow it, a goal is scored, you probably shouldn't have been blowing the whistle in the first place. I respect your opinion, I've never done anything anywhere near hockey-related, I just enjoy watching, except when asinine rules like that have to be applied because they exist. I don't necessarily blame the ref's for applying the rules, despite my claims of subjectivity I'm just noting that it's a possibility, I will give the ref's the benefit of the doubt in that they are applying the rule to the best of their abilities, but it doesn't change the fact that it is not a good rule. As to officiating being a difficult job... So what? Being the President is hard too, but if our President sucks and leads us into wars and depressions and all that, we're going to blame him and as soon as we can, we vote him out. A doctor has a hard, job, but if he misdiagnoses someone or makes some other mistake and they die, the doctor is probably going to be sued before he can blink, the difficulty of his job isn't protecting him. Teachers have an incredibly hard job, but if you feel like your kid isn't learning anything and you feel it's the teacher's fault, you are going to be clambering for her head on a platter. Ref's have a hard job, yes, that's nice. Sometimes they screw up, they're human. That's fine too. But to have them held above every other standard, above reproach, because it's "difficult" is absurd. I appreciate your viewpoint and it probably has a lot more substance than mine, since you have experience and I have only opinion, but I strongly disagree. /end rant

Joined: 06/15/2009

MGoPoints: 895

Elise

February 2nd, 2010 at 10:54 AM ^

I understand your points, however they simply can't happen... If the play is over at the whistle and not at the point when the ref or linesman decides, then you open yourself to a time conundrum. Sometimes all you need is just a few extra seconds to get one last desperation play off, but if the play is dead at the whistle, it would only take a moment's hesitation from the referee to send the game into controversy. 4 seconds left vs. 3 seconds left is pretty significant when it comes to desperation plays. On the subject of subjectivity, I would question how much more objective you can get than "the play is over because you think it is over." There's no way to know once you lose sight of a puck how long it may take to emerge, if it emerges at all. By waiting to kill the play, you're opening yourself up to the exact same problems, just a little later. The rules exist not because somebody felt like making it up, but because that is really the only way to go about it. It's a little like trying to find a way to retroactively call an incomplete bubble screen pass a fumble... there's just no way to do it fairly. It might have been a fumble upon further review, but somebody had to make a decision on the spot. You can't just go back and give the defense a free fumble recovery to make up for your error (granted, a football in the air is a lot easier to see than a hockey puck slithering under a goalie's pads). I'm not saying it wasn't a poor call, because it might have been. There is such a thing as a bad call. If the puck was really loose, then it might have been a bad call. If the far side referee blew the play dead, then it's possible he was in error. As with anybody who makes mistakes in their job, it's possible he might not be all that great at it in comparison with his colleagues. Any hockey player will tell you there are refs who are better than others.. and the refs won't tell you, but they know who's better than who as well. It happens, and with the four-man system being implemented last year, there are going to be those who are still pretty green to D-I Hockey. On the flip side, these guys are actually pretty amazing at their jobs, despite the few cherry-picked instances. The amount of information they have to process in split second is incredible. I'm truly awed sometimes, especially with guys at the NHL level. I'd be willing to bet that even the most loathed NCAA referees make 99% of their calls correctly, 0.9% of the remaining calls are just missed, and maybe 0.1% are legit terrible calls (see: Corey Tropp).

Joined: 07/02/2008

MGoPoints: 2251

streaker

February 2nd, 2010 at 2:38 PM ^

Corey- With your logic, the play can be whistled dead while the puck is still in the air, well, because they can. Officiating is judgment; In this case, poor judgment. All the league has done with this is mimic the Bettman Rules that basically exonerates that official at the expense of the team he screws. Shegos wasn't too pleased at the Michigan player (I think it was Caporusso) who skated by shortly after the call and made a comment, I suspect about the call. He got the gate. I am also not on board with your assessment of CCHA officials, especially in comparison to NHL officials- who for the most part- short of screwing the Red Wings- do as good a job as the Boss lets them. Remember, THEY can't do that to our pledges, only WE can do that to our pledges.

Joined: 02/01/2009

MGoPoints: 79

cheef16

February 2nd, 2010 at 5:37 PM ^

If we must truly account in the rules for the delay between an illegal hockey event and the official's whistle, a second would be added back to the game clock after each whistle since everything that happened after the point of any illegal hockey event is not relevant to the scoreboard. We don't add back that second because the idea is ludicrous. Just as ludicrous is a rule like the one invoked in this instance that allows for something other than the correct call to be made.

Joined: 02/02/2010

MGoPoints: 378

Mr. Robot

February 1st, 2010 at 3:39 PM ^

At some point during the Saturday game at the Joe, the band started playing The Victors from the top (Well, the half version like the one played during a football pregame). They did so at a bad time, right before a break ended and play resumed. Now typically, the crowd continues vocally, but normally just the chorus because that's all the band usually starts in that situation. A large number from what I could hear though could and did sing the whole thing through the chorus, and I found that to be quite awesome. Good job to everyone who knows the whole song and sang it, especially when the band stopped playing and half the people around you were lost at that point. You guys all win an internet for contributing to an epic sporting event moment.

Joined: 10/27/2009

MGoPoints: 3031

streaker

February 2nd, 2010 at 10:11 AM ^

Great job, Brian. Enjoy your takes and your comments on TKA. FWIW, Lanseth is still doing CCHA games...like Brian Aaron, though, Yost is an assignment he would probably rather avoid. I think Langseth has been banned to Fairbanks or something worse like Columbus. We've seen Aaron once this season. Nonetheless, I think the officiating has three issues: 1. the aforementioned back side official making bogus calls from 90 feet away (ala Aaron v. ND last season)and.. 2. the offical at the net blowing down a play early. Why? Well, in this case because Shegos was grossly out of position. He was literally behind the net where he blocked his own view of the play, unlike the Brown winner on Saturday where (gulp) Wilkins got it correct by being to the side of the net, allowing him to see the play to its completion. For a guy of his experience and capability, Shegos showed total competence FAIL. Screw the goaltenders, anyway. It sure hasn't helped ours. Lastly... 3. Calling too many penalties. Seems they know how to use their whistle then, that is unless you are whiny FYS fan that is still complaining about the "non-whistle, sorry it's a penalty and not a goal" call on Rowe, after his best attempt to imitate his hooded football team tackling technique on Chris Summers. Oh, and if Anastos is serious (Lansing State Urinal from a few weeks back) about cutting costs, besides keeping the CCHA at 11 teams, the first to go will be the pseudo-referee-former-linesmen aka, the fourth official. Buh-bye unknown official and guys like Langseth. Good thing Molina shaved his porno-mustache, too, and stayed on the blue line.

Joined: 02/01/2009

MGoPoints: 79