2023-24 NHL Season Thread

[Cowtown]

Nothing is worse than NBA officiating

If I may be so bold ...

 

[BlazeOrange]

I’m more irritated at McDavid getting the Conn Smythe Trophy than the officiating. The trophy is in part a PR strategy by the league to create marketing opportunities for the team. The Oilers can’t credible use it in a marketing pitch since they lost and would be killed in the media if they did. You can’t get any media narrative (other than what a stupid decision it is) because McDavid is going to rightly blow off any questions about it. The optics of Bettman handing the trophy to himself is just awful…but I’m not sure the optics of a road player on the losing team getting booed while getting handed the trophy is better.

There might be some unique circumstance where a player on the losing team getting the Conn Smythe would make sense…last night was not one of those rare times (which I’m unsure exist in the real world anyway).

I see no need to award this on the ice at all. Everyone just wants to see the Cup. Giving it to a losing opposing player dampens it even more. He was probably halfway changed by the time they made the announcement. I assume they shut the audio down for no-no words from the crowd.

And ESPN did a crap job with the Cup celebration too. Missed the initial raising of the Cup and key players getting their lap while they stayed in boring interviews.

 

[Cowtown]

The NHL has nothing on the NBA; I’ve never seen anything as blatantly obviously one-sided as the Sacramento-LA Western Conference finals in 2002. I think the NBA has a clear agenda and has refs putting their thumbs on the scale all the time - it wasn’t working in 2002 and they switched to both hands on the scale to make sure they got the result they wanted.

At least in the NHL you know what “playoff hockey penalties” are, and it’s normally fairly evenly called. I didn’t see last night as some egregious exception to that.

Officials in the NBA are simply the mechanism by which the League management asserts and maintains their "Star System." Their only job is to ensure the stars get enough calls to continue as stars.

 

[Cowtown]

I’m more irritated at McDavid getting the Conn Smythe Trophy than the officiating. The trophy is in part a PR strategy by the league to create marketing opportunities for the team. The Oilers can’t credible use it in a marketing pitch since they lost and would be killed in the media if they did. You can’t get any media narrative (other than what a stupid decision it is) because McDavid is going to rightly blow off any questions about it. The optics of Bettman handing the trophy to himself is just awful…but I’m not sure the optics of a road player on the losing team getting booed while getting handed the trophy is better.

There might be some unique circumstance where a player on the losing team getting the Conn Smythe would make sense…last night was not one of those rare times (which I’m unsure exist in the real world anyway).

It should have been Bobrovsky. As it was last night, it's just a bone tossed to the fans who wanted to see a Canadian team win the cup.