“Double-standard”, “preferential treatment” and other phrases exploded into the hockeysphere to explain why even two-minute minors were not assessed to Sidney Crosby after his sac-tapping and finger-slashing in two games last week.
Oh I don’t know, maybe the referees missed it or didn’t interpret it by the rule book? Just like they miss a lot of infractions committed by a lot of players in a lot of games in a lot of seasons.
However, certain Buffalo writers were quick to beat the old dead horse, foaming at the mouth about preferential treatment, and Dan Bylsma chimed in with some weird analogy about how the Penguins today are like Detroit in the 90s in gaining favor with the referees. Ryan O’Reilly himself started off rationally. “At the time it hurt and it threw me off guard. I didn’t know it was [Crosby] until he came up to me on the ice and apologized … It happens. It would have been nice to get a penalty, get a power play off it. It’s definitely a penalty but sometimes things get missed.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUnSZddpObo]Unfortunately, O’Reilly couldn’t resist feeding the myth. “He’s the best player in the game and he might have a little bit more leeway. Not necessarily something referees are doing on purpose but just in general. He’s one key guy people are buying tickets to see. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
However, the facts don’t support the assertion that O’Reilly and millions of others believe. If we analyze star players comparable to Crosby’s production who have played a similar amount of games, we would expect Crosby to have fewer penalty minutes than all of them if the hypothesis of Crosby getting favorable calls is true.
Since his 2005-06 rookie year, Crosby has played 776 regular season games, been charged with 576 penalty minutes and leads the NHL with 1.31 points per game. Of the top 15 players in points per game since 2005-06 who have played between 700 and 800 regular season games, all of them (except one), actually have fewer penalty minutes than Crosby. The one exception?
Evgeni Malkin, alternate captain of the Pittsburgh Preferentials.
While we’re on the subject, in the Crosby era, the Penguins have received the eighth most penalty minutes per game. Buffalo? Twenty-first on the list. But hey, don’t let facts get in the way of blind hatred, myth-perpetuation and jealousy.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHSiVYCagH0]
Two nights later in Ottawa, a Crosby slash that was textbook Rule 61, was definitely missed by both referees. The slash left the tip of one of Marc Methot’s fingers a gruesome, bloody mess. If it was the other way around and some jobber Senator slashed Crosby’s hand, with no penalty, and jeopardized the Pittsburgh captain’s chance of dressing for the playoffs, Penguins fans would understandably be apoplectic. Yet is it some master conspiracy on the part of the officials?
Look, in the end, there are only two referees but twelve players on the ice. In real time, not every foul will be caught or interpreted correctly and thus some calls will be missed, whether it’s a star or a non-star.
Ottawa captain Erik Karlsson didn’t see any malicious intent. “[Crosby] puts his stick in as [Methot] is trying to shoot the puck in and unfortunately it hits his finger. It turns out worse than most other times, plays like that happen all the time, but I don’t think it was intentional or dirty.”
But don’t tell that to Eugene Melnyk, owner of the Senators, who once again embarrassed himself by going beyond apoplectic in his desire to slam the Penguins and Crosby for allegedly taking advantage of preferential treatment. Four seasons ago, after Matt Cooke’s skate sliced Karlsson’s Achilles tendon, Melnyk ridiculously organized a “forensic investigation” into whether Cooke intentionally cut Karlsson.
Last Friday, Melnyk went on a bizarre rant on TSN Radio 1200 in Ottawa, blurting out:
You do anything that’s almost a certain injury: I think the only way to [fix] it is you wipe the guy off the map for not one or two games. Ten. How about a season? … You hammer these guys, you take away their money, because they all understand money and you simply say, you’re done for ten games … We all know who he is. The guy’s just a whiner beyond belief and you do this kind of stuff, I don’t care who you are in the league. I don’t care if you’re the #1 player in the league. You should sit out a long time for this kind of crap.
Disregarding how ludicrous season-long suspensions would be for routine injury-causing penalties, and the off-subject, standard anti-Crosby “whiner” trope, it’s interesting to note that Melnyk talks about taking away players’ money.
See, the Senators owner knows a lot about taking away other people’s money because in his pre-hockey business life, Biovail, the pharmaceutical company he founded and owned, was the subject of investigations by Securities Commissions in both Canada and the United States. As far back as 2003, mere weeks after purchasing the Senators, a bank analyzing Biovail found it odd that Melnyk’s compensation represented 46% of the company’s operating income in 2001.
Then in the spring of 2008, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Biovail and Melnyk, at this point the former CEO, with fraudulent accounting practices and misleading investors and analysts. Two months later, after the Pens swept Ottawa in the first round, Biovail paid a large fine to avoid going to court. In the preceding years, it was Melnyk who was threatening court proceedings against investment analysts and fund managers who he claimed were creating false rumors in order to profit from sinking his company’s stock.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLB-4anNjYE]His intimidation tactics didn’t work and he was further found acting “contrary to the public interest” by the Ontario Securities Commission in 2010, the year the Pens once again eliminated Ottawa from the playoffs.
Even if we somehow disregard the repugnant financial mess that Melnyk created for investors and the executives who had to clean it up, and focus only on hockey, why is Melnyk trying the same lame intimidation tactics toward an opposing player when his own franchise is a mess on and off the ice?
According to Forbes annual NHL valuations, Ottawa has a Metro Area Population (MAP) of 1.2 million, equal to the small Canadian markets Edmonton and Calgary. Winnipeg, the league’s smallest market, has a MAP of just 700,000. While the Oilers, Flames and Jets all made at least $11.4 million in operating income last year, how did Ottawa earn just $6.3 million? Because when you spend your spare time holding completely unnecessary press conferences disparaging your already dejected team days before the season ends, or take out full page ads in newspapers ripping everyone in your organization except yourself, fans in your local area no longer want to spend their hard-earned dollars buying the product that the owner constantly tears apart.
Maybe in reality, it isn’t Crosby “whining”, but misguided owner-critics who should stop whining, step back, and let the hockey people run the show.
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