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Winners Don't Wait for Calls and Breaks |
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Follow Paul on Twitter: @paulstewart22
I may not look like it these days at age 65 with all the mileage I've accumulated, but I was a good multi-sport athlete in my youth. Hockey was my first love and greatest passion, and the sport that I played and then officiated professionally. However, baseball and football were in my blood, too, and football was probably the sport at which I most excelled.
As my regular readers know, my father Bill Stewart Sr. was a prolific coach and official in multiple sports at the high school and collegiate levels. Once, when he was umpiring one of my baseball games, my father rang me up on three called strikes. I thought each pitch was borderline at best, especially the third strike.
Afterwards, I asked him about the call.
"You were looking for a gift," he said. "Next time swing the bat. A real .300 hitter would have hit those pitches."
My father's words stung a little, but it made me think.
Another time, my father refereed one of my hockey games. After the game, a supporter of the opposing team loudly accused my dad of showing favoritism to my team and to me. In his usual straightforward manner, my father locked eyes with the person and spoke in a firm but calm tone.
"I called him for two penalties," he said. "Paul scored his two goals on his own."
I bring up these stories because these were lessons that took throughout my playing and officiating days: don't look for gift calls. Don't lament bad breaks. Make your own "luck". Hockey is, indeed, a game of inches and a game of bounces but it's also one in which the team that makes more plays and gets superior goaltending will eventually have more "puck luck" go their way. The team that dictates the play will also typically end up with more power plays.
In the current Stanley Cup Final, the Washington Capitals fully deserve to be leading the series, three games to one, and to be one win away from the first Cup championship in franchise history. They outplayed the Vegas Golden Knights in the last two games, and have also gotten goaltending from Braden Holtby than Vegas has gotten from Marc-Andre Fleury.
There are always little moments that add up to big things. In Game 4 on Monday, Vegas got off to a good start, with a hit post and an early power play that produced a wide-open chance that was not buried. Those things happen. The key is to just keep doing what you've been doing, and eventually the pucks will go in. Over the last two games, however, Washington has simply executed better and made more plays.
Last night, one only had to look at special teams: Washington went 3-for-5 on the power play and 4-for-4 on the penalty kill. Do that and a team is usually going to win.
Vegas coach Gerard Gallant is going to the win the Jack Adams Award this year as NHL's coach of the year. He's pushed the right buttons all season. Last night, however, was not his best night.
In regards to the sequence that led up to the fifth Capitals goal, the reverse hit by T.J. Oshie as he fended off a back checking Colin Miller while making a drop pass was a legal play.
"They didn’t see a penalty on it,” Gallant said, referring to the officials. “I think everybody saw it. It’s a 4-2 hockey game, he gave him a pretty good elbow, broke his nose, what do you do? They said they didn’t see it. No explanation. They said they didn’t see a penalty.”
"They" didn't see a penalty because there was no penalty: no elbow (see replay below, which shows Oshie checking with his shoulder and the elbow coming up only in follow-through), no interference, nothing that fell outside the boundaries of a legal means of creating a little more space for oneself. The broken nose Miller sustained was unfortunate, but the play itself was not a penalty.
Gallant also took a swipe at Washington for sending out their top power play unit late in the game with the score at 5-2 until the Caps tacked on another goal to make it a 6-2 final. A Vegas comeback realistically wasn't going to happen at that point but it wasn't like the Caps were winning by eight goals or some such. Even if they were, there is no "mercy rule" in pro sports, especially not in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final.
One of the biggest reasons why the Vegas Golden Knights were such a great story this season in the NHL and have gotten within three wins of the Stanley Cup was the way the team made its own breaks and seized its chances. Not every close call will go your way -- and the right call was made to let the play continue on the eventual Kempny goal -- and no opponent in a championship round is going to do your pride a favor and take it easy on you late in a three-goal game.
If the Golden Knights are going to climb back into this series, they will have to get back to doing the things that a championship caliber team does. If they feel sorry for themselves over the calls and breaks that didn't go their way, they will lose in 5 games. Simple as that.
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Paul Stewart holds the distinction of being the first U.S.-born citizen to make it to the NHL as both a player and referee. On March 15, 2003, he became the first American-born referee to officiate in 1,000 NHL games. Today, Stewart serves as director of hockey officiating for the ECAC.
Blogger •Former NHL Referee • 
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