While the guys in black and white stripes haven’t had too flagrant an impact on the likely outcome of any games in the Caps’ third-round series against the Tampa Bay Lightning, they haven’t endeared themselves to the team (nor its fans) either, with several egregious missed calls, several of which led directly to Lightning goals.
First there was a goaltender interference called on Tom Wilson, after a hook from Chris Kunitz so blatant it drew the ire of the neutral live broadcast team and the intermission analyst team both. Then the zebras hallucinated a high-sticking penalty after a puck caught Victor Hedman square in the face. Tampa Bay scored on both resulting power plays.
In Game 4, it was a Steven Stamkos trip of Dmitry Orlov that led directly to an Ondrej Palat snipe, prompting an awkward back-and-forth between Mike Milbury, who lamented the missed call, and Pierre McGuire, who vomited into his microphone for a few minutes, which ultimately took on the form of something resembling a defense of the call on the basis of previous bad calls elsewhere in the NHL Playoffs.
Then, Game 5 was one of fourteen games over the last ten seasons in which an NHL team has received 0 penalty minutes in a playoff game:
Moving along, in Game 6 the whistles somehow remained pocketed despite this blatant interference by Dan Girardi on Alex Ovechkin:
Suffice it to say the officials haven’t exactly curried any favor with Trotz’s squad. So in anticipation of tonight’s high-stakes tilt, in a series in which Special Teams performance has taken a substantial share of the larger conversation, let’s take a look back at how the Caps’ have fared in previous Games 7 in the Ovechkin Era, with regards to the officiating.
Yeah… it hasn’t been great. Tonight will be the 11th Game 7 of the Alex Ovechkin era. In the ten that preceded it, the Caps have received fewer opportunities than their opponent seven times, have broken even twice, and have only been on the right side of a surplus once. Overall, their penalty differential in Ovi Era Games 7 is minus-12 (and they haven’t scored a power-play goal in a Game 7 in over a decade, in 17 opportunities; on the flip side, they’ve allowed a half-dozen power-play goals in the same span, all coming in losses, though only once since the 2010 Montreal series).
But bigger than the differential itself, of course, have been some of the individual calls, including one in that Montreal Game 7 that wasn’t even called a penalty. (trigger warning!)
Wonder if the players notice these things? Well…
Respectfully, Ovi, there is something you can do with that – take care of your own business to the point where a bad call or a missed call doesn’t negatively impact the outcome. Tonight’s challenge is going to be difficult enough on its own without worrying about the Ghosts of Zebras Past. Leave that to us fans…