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Bruins @ Leafs - Mar. 26th, 7:00pm - CBC, TSN 1050

AvroArrow said:
What's not clear is how you went from my last comment to what you said.

You were trying to discredit the embellishment penalty against Kadri for nonsensical reasons.  I countered you.  Then, well, whatever the heck you said...

I don't understand what 1 has to do with this penalty...

As for 2... Well, it all has to start somewhere, now doesn't it?  Guess what... It just started on that penalty...

As for 3... What the heck do the opinions of 'most people' have to do with this?  Last I checked, 'most people' have no authority in the game...

I didn't mean for the validity of that 1 embellishment penalty to be the central point of this discussion. I disagree with the call, plenty of others did too, but whatever. They called it.

Again, people here are saying that Kadri embellishes far too often. But over the course of 1.75 NHL seasons he didn't receive a single embellishment penalty from the refs. So as far as the league was concerned, Kadri wasn't doing anything wrong.

If the league wants to start addressing this, then the only way to do so is to start calling him on embellishment penalties. Yes, so far we have one example of them doing that, but there's also plenty of examples of the refs lately just blatantly ignoring clear penalties on Kadri. The former is fine, the latter is completely asinine.
 
CarltonTheBear said:
I didn't mean for the validity of that 1 embellishment penalty to be the central point of this discussion. I disagree with the call, plenty of others did too, but whatever. They called it.

Except central to your argument was the following:

CarltonTheBear said:
And if the league does have a problem with Kadri's embellishment habits, the solution to that is to actually penalize him for it.

That VERY MUCH makes that one embellishment penalty a key point - they literally HAVE started penalizing him for embellishment.

CarltonTheBear said:
Again, people here are saying that Kadri embellishes far too often. But over the course of 1.75 NHL seasons he didn't receive a single embellishment penalty from the refs. So as far as the league was concerned, Kadri wasn't doing anything wrong.

I'm not sure what 'people' you are referring to.  McGarnagle, maybe... Freer does regularly give Kadri shit.  But otherwise, I haven't seen a lot of 'people' saying Kadri embellishes 'far too often'.

As for the refs not giving him a penalty...  First off, refs miss things, screw up things, etc.  Secondly, Kadri does a pretty good job keeping embellishments tight when he does it, without the theatrics that make them obvious.  Thirdly, in this very GDT, you're ripping the refs for not doing their jobs properly, but then take their lack of embellishment penalties against Kadri has some sort of authority...

CarltonTheBear said:
If the league wants to start addressing this, then the only way to do so is to start calling him on embellishment penalties. Yes, so far we have one example of them doing that, but there's also plenty of examples of the refs lately just blatantly ignoring clear penalties on Kadri. The former is fine, the latter is completely asinine.

I don't disagree, but this is kind of a 'boy who cried wolf' scenario, isn't it?  How can Kadri expect a call if he embellishes?  And while I disagree with it, I believe the lack of calls in Kadri's favour is more evidence that the refs think he IS embellishing.
 
McGarnagle said:
But I don't think the league really does have a mechanism for addressing "ongoing slight embellishment at the speed of the game which can't be readily identified without video review" (which I shall now coin as OSEATSOTGWCBRIVW) - which ideally would be called as a 2 min minor - and outright diving, which appears to have to be blatant enough for the league to make it worth fining/embarrassing the player and avoid blowback controversy from the players union.

Well, I guess I'd say that it sort of seems like you're trying to have it both ways here. If the league looks at what Kadri or whoever does and decides that it doesn't rise to the level of what they can penalize with a fine then the reason they don't have a mechanism for that is because they don't see the need for one(and, no, I don't think "union blowback" is a factor). If the NHL looks at what Kadri does and decides it's in some sort of grey area then it's their job to separate white from black, and either find a threshold for penalizing players that fits better with how they want to discourage embellishment or recognize that wherever the line is drawn players are going to push that line and decisions will need to be made.

McGarnagle said:
And I don't think its crazy to assume that when referees seem to notice a player regularly going down a bit too easy over the course of multiple seasons, that they talk, and a reputation/bias gets formed. Until the robots take over, the human condition is going to have to remain a factor.

Typically though when people talk about a human factor in officiating what they're referring to is refs getting calls wrong which I'm ok with. In fact, I tend to think the constant complaining about the refs in GDTs is pretty ridiculous. Hockey's a fast game, it's tough to call and things get missed. So long as there's not a bias one way or the other, and I don't for a second think there is, I accept that as part of the bargain.

So the problem I have with what you're saying isn't the inclusion of a human element, it's the idea that those biases should be able to form. I don't want referees to take it upon themselves to just decide  on these reputations for a player or a team and, no, I don't think it's just a natural and unavoidable consequence of games not being called by robots. The league has a mechanism for determining if a player embellishes to often. If what Kadri does doesn't meet that standard then it's not the Refs jobs to decide that, actually, he does.

Because even if you think that's the case, that what Kadri's doing deserves or warrants or should allow for Refs to make a conscious decision to call things differently if he's involved based on these prior misdeeds, then I think what we saw at the end of last night's game is a pretty strong case that what they should do is just call Kadri for more unsportsmanlike penalties, not let legitimate penalties go if they're committed against Kadri. That's almost certainly going to lead to a game that's more out of hand, not less. 
 

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