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About 20 years ago, I was featured in a Bud Ice commercial along with colleagues Don Koharski and Bill McCreary. The advertisement showed on-ice clips of microphoned officials at work. I told a player, "Aren't you tired of getting thrown out by me?" and McCreary said to a rookie, "I don't know who you are, but if you keep doing that, you're going to sit."
The National Hockey League Players Association took exception to the commercial, claiming it embarrassed players. The commercial did not air for long before it was pulled from rotation on NHL broadcasts.
In the years that have followed, the NHLPA has continued down the slippery slope of becoming more and more the "PC" instead of the PA. This includes paying lip service but being largely uncooperative in deed to efforts to crack down on things such as embellishment/diving in a meaningful way. Why?Same reason. Making players publicly accountable "embarrasses" them. Never mind that players who dive are embarrassing and disrespecting the game.
Most recently, Don Cherry jumped all over the case of Pittsburgh Penguins' forward Nick Bonino for doing the all-too-common "head snap" to try to buy a phantom high sticking call. It wasn't the worst embellishment I've ever seen -- pretty run of the mill -- but it was embellishment nonetheless. I agree with Don's basic premise, although Bonino has a lot of company in that particular sin. What Bonino did happens leaguewide every night, but gets more attention drawn to it when it is spotted during the playoffs.
My view on how to crack down on embellishment has never wavered: make coaches accountable for it so that the risk-reward isn't worth it, and they will start to coach their players NOT to dive. For instance, if a player on Team A is nabbed for diving, both he and the coach get a warning as per the current system. But the next time ANY player from that same team -- not just the same player -- dives, the coach gets suspended for one game. Further infractions result in stiffer suspensions for the coach. The current scale of slap-on-the wrist fines is a joke.
Does it work to put coaches on the spot? In my own on-ice experience it did. Yes, I would take whatever action I needed to with the player. My attitude was fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. But I also addressed it with their coach.
Two examples here: one involving the late Pat Burns when he coached the Montreal Canadiens and the other involving Colin Campbell when he coached the New York Rangers.
I recall one time when Claude Lemieux was doing his usual embellishment act in a game in Montreal, I said to him in my best French, "Are you an elevator, Claude? You're up, you're down. You're up, you're down." Then I skated over to Burns.
"Pat," I said. "You need to do some coaching here. I know what Lemieux is doing and, if you don't get him to cut it out, I'm going to sit him."
Burns stood up for his player as I stood there, as I would expect a coach to do. However, Lemieux was on his best behavior thereafter. I found out later that Burns had laced into him.
The Campbell story is similar except for the coach's response. I don't recall which Rangers player was involved, but it doesn't matter.
"You can't talk to my player that way!" he bellowed. (Campbell once said the same thing to me in regard to some verbal jousting I had with my old Cincinnati Stingers teammate and friend Mark Messier and I shut Colie up by saying, "Why not, Colie? I bought him his first beer.")
In this case, I told Campbell he needed to step up and coach the diver not to do it, or else I'd put a stop to it myself. Unlike Burns, Campbell took it personally.
"Don't tell me how to do my job!" he bellowed.
I resisted the urge to make a wisecrack, and said that my point was, the diving was going to stop one way or another.
At any rate, if NHL coaches had more skin in the game in the risk-reward of their players diving -- and not just public lip service to detesting it but subtly patting a player on the back at the bench when he draws a penalty via embellishment -- I am confident we'd see much less of it.
Remember when bench-clearing brawls were common? I sure do. When the league made coaches subject to suspension - as well as automatic 10-game suspensions for players that leave the bench to join an altercation -- the bench-clearers became virtually extinct.
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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.