Refs set tone with plethora of pre-season penalties

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This article was published 19/09/2017 (2921 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NO one was singing, “I love a parade” Monday night as a steady procession of Winnipeg Jets and Minnesota Wild players headed to the penalty box.

Referees Cameron Voss and Chris Lee were the grand marshalls at Bell MTS Place, handing out 17 minor penalties in the first NHL pre-season game for both Central Division clubs. Five of those calls were for slashing — all part of the league’s crackdown on stick swipes aimed in the general area of an opponent’s arms and hands.

Michael Sgarbossa served the Jets’ only slashing minor, while the Wild were whistled on four stick fouls.

Constant interruptions, overworked special teams units and lack of ice time for players hoping to make an impression made predictably tedious exhibition hockey even more uninspiring.

At practice on Tuesday, the general consensus from the Jets was the heavy-handed approach by the men in stripes likely won’t last.

“Clearly, they’re putting a premium on that in the pre-season. I would expect that to subside a little bit as we go along here. To spend half the game on special teams isn’t good for anyone,” said captain Blake Wheeler, who enjoyed more than eight minutes of power-play time.”

“They’re using the first few games to maybe overdo it a little bit, so it gets harped on. Coaches will be all over the players to maybe keep their sticks to themselves and those little plays that are being called right now are going to be magnified during the regular season. I don’t anticipate as much of the holding and those kind of penalties that were getting called every time. But I think the slashes on the stick are going to be pretty consistent throughout the season.”

In eight pre-season games Monday, a whopping 44 slashing calls were made.

Last season, Jets forward Mathieu Perreault suffered a broken thumb in late January when he was slashed by Corey Perry of the Anaheim Ducks. Calgary Flames star forward Johnny Gaudreau also missed time with a fractured finger as a result of a slash, while the tip of then-Ottawa Senators blue-liner Marc Methot’s finger was left hanging by a threat after he was hacked by the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Sidney Crosby.

Clearly, the league wants those scenarios to stop.

“It’s not that they’ll never do it again, there’s a lot of reflex action, but you hope that over time it deters that kind of behaviour,” NHL director of officiating Stephen Walkom said Tuesday.

He held the same position with the league in 2005-06 when, coming out of a lockout year, the NHL cracked down on hooking and holding. While that lasted only a few seasons, an aspect that remains is penalties for placing the stick in front of an opponent to try to slow him down.

Whacking at an adversary’s hands or stick to make him lose control of the puck started to become the norm.

“There’s nothing worse than having a slash on your hand when you’re trying to shoot. It’s opposite momentum going against each other and those don’t feel very good,” said Wheeler. “The intent is right… if somebody has a clear break at the net and they’re getting (the stick) up on the hands, preventing them from having a scoring chance, then it’s a good rule.”

Perreault, who vividly recalls the searing pain after Perry’s hack job, and the ensuing numbness and swelling, said players will have to adjust.

“We’ll get used to it,” he said. “At some point you’re each going to have to be owning your stick. It’s like the high-stick rule. Even if you don’t mean to do it and you hit someone in the face it’s a penalty, so now everyone’s being careful about it. I feel the slashing part of it’s going to come down to that, too.”

Built on speed, the Jets could be a club that benefits from the enforcement of the slashing rule.

“We’re all for that, especially with our team. We think we had a number of times going to nets last year where we had really good chances (taken away), so we’re all for it,” said head coach Paul Maurice.

The league has also urged officials to enforce rules governing faceoffs. Players must face their opponent squarely and keep their feet behind the lines. It was widespread for centres to cheat by moving as close as possible to the faceoff dots to gain leverage on opponents.

If a player cheats, he is tossed out of the faceoff and a teammate takes his place. If a team does it twice on the same faceoff, it is a two-minute penalty.

The Jets play their second pre-season game tonight when the Edmonton Oilers pay a visit. Game time is 7 p.m.

The club’s new masked man, Steve Mason, is expected to get the start in goal.

Maurice hinted forwards from the club’s top two lines will likely play, while the bottom six from the Minnesota game will swap out for six new faces against the Oilers.

As well, defencemen Josh Morrissey, Jacob Trouba and Dmitry Kulikov will get their first tests of the pre-season.

Winnipeg heads to St. Paul, Minn., for a rematch with the Wild on Thursday.

— with files from Canadian Press

jason.bell@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @WFPJasonBell