Vancouver Canucks Messageboard

Fire Gary Bettman.

Sue the N.H.L.

Let the N.H.L know that you have hired independent council and experts on the rules and will be taping and very closley scrutinizing every seconed of every game to watch for unfair or bias refereeing before the start of a playoff series. After every game send them a detailed tape(make sure you keep atleast one copy) of the disputed calls letting them know that if this continues in any way you will be looking at taking legal action against the league.

Now i'm in construction so I have no idea if this can even be done. Maybe Jyrki21 could help you there.

I'm sure that if you let them know you wern't going to sit there and take it dry without some sort of legal repercussion they may be a little more hesitant.

Yeah I saw nights when we had 8 powerplays and could have had 18. Just because we had more dosn't mean they didn't miss a tonne.

To me It seemed Vancouver had to play by the new rules but Anahiem didn't.

Sorry, verv. I don't mean to pile on an old North Delta guy, because I am one. But you're singing from the Loser's Songbook on this one. The Ducks are a veteran team, they know the tricks better than the Canucks do. They are at this point, a smarter team.
But back to the real issue. The officiating in the NHL these days is dreadful. Nobody knows what's going on out there. Gotta get back to one ref who can at least manage the game on his own terms. I watch to many nights when the two refs are competing against each other. It's ridiculous. Trying to call every tug and stick-reach foul is never, EVER going to work in the playoffs. This isn't basketball. It can't be done, no matter how hard Count Von Bettman tries to make it so. The best thing is to let one ref manage the game as best he can. The sport cannot be officiated in absolutes. Everything needs to be made relative. As long as Bettman doesn't agree, things won't be fixed. The Canucks weren't screwed in this series, they simply weren't good enough.

I agree they wern't good enough and were never going to win, and the little hooks and holds that are missed happen. I'm talking about running the goalie, pushing the goalie into the net. Or the time they pulled the puck from his glove and scored. Or when Kunitz left his feet infront of the ref to nail a d-man. Or when Niedemeyer came out of the box and tripped Bulis the exact same way they called Naslund for tripping Selanne. Or the countless picks.

These were obvious to me.

I'm with a previous poster who said that the one penalty that pisses him off is diving. Selanne was diving all over the damn ice and NEVER got called for it, but our team got called for tripping because he flies through the air like a missile.
Diving is chicken shit antics and should be called way more! You notice they called Trevor for diving! TREVOR frickin' Linden who never took a dive in his life and salami got away with it on countless occasions...............prick..........

Quoting Whistler from GDT Game 5 in Anaheim...

"Pitchfork the goalie....SCORES!!!!

Elbow the puck carrier in the head....SCORES!!!!

What can you say?"

I couldn't agree more

To those say that Anaheim was going to win that game anyway...I'm not so sure.
Luongo was amazing that game and with the game going into double O.T. it could have easily gone Vancouver's way. Take the series back to Vancouver, who knows what might have been?

I think it was game 4 on the radio and Shorthouse commented that the refs just stopped calling all the Ducks' infractions after 3 or 4 straight penalties to them.

Was the ref'ing good?...No. Was it a conspiracy?...come on.

The Ducks were making a point of getting into Luongo's space and it worked. Good for them. They pushed the envelope and it paid off. I HATE the fact that our boys are going golfing but I'm not going to blame it on the stripes.

sk8er wrote:I'm with a previous poster who said that the one penalty that pisses him off is diving. Selanne was diving all over the damn ice and NEVER got called for it, but our team got called for tripping because he flies through the air like a missile.
Diving is chicken shit antics and should be called way more! You notice they called Trevor for diving! TREVOR frickin' Linden who never took a dive in his life and salami got away with it on countless occasions...............prick..........

You'd think the refs would keep a memo in their mind about it. FINS DIVE NOT NORTHAMERICAN VETERANS. If you call diving against them, they won't do it again. Funny how Burrown got a penalty in the 1st series after the play and Salami got no penalties for 5 games. Really bugs me to watch it happen. If a player hits the ice, a ref's mind will automatically think that there will be a penalty. I hope Salami gets a penalty in round 3. BECAUSE HE SHOULD.

ververgaert wrote:Let the N.H.L know that you have hired independent council and experts on the rules and will be taping and very closley scrutinizing every seconed of every game to watch for unfair or bias refereeing before the start of a playoff series. After every game send them a detailed tape(make sure you keep atleast one copy) of the disputed calls letting them know that if this continues in any way you will be looking at taking legal action against the league.

Now i'm in construction so I have no idea if this can even be done. Maybe Jyrki21 could help you there.

Sure I can help: no. You can sue someone when you've suffered a loss when they breached your rights -- they have damaged your property, hurt your health, broken a contract you relied on.

As a sports fan, you have no cause of action. You have only an emotional investment in a team (which is utterly voluntary), and the league owes you no duty of care beyond, e.g., protecting the fans in the stands from harm. Your rights -- in the true sense, not in the popular sense where everything is a "right" -- have not been infringed. NHL referees are not government officials, so their conduct is not somehow open to general duties of fairness and not subject to judicial review. (Even if they were, that'd be up to the wronged party -- the plaintiff team, not spectators -- to pursue).

The only way you could possibly begin to have a cause of action is if everyone who paid money to see a game somehow filed a class action in contract (I don't know if this can even be done in B.C.) that the League somehow didn't hold up their end of the bargain by providing a substandard product. To do so, you'd have to somehow prove that there was an implied contractual right to outstanding refereeing (an utterly subjective understanding), and prove that this was not met on a balance of probabilities (impossible given the subjectivity mentioned), and that this somehow lessened the end product and the paying fans were not given what both parties objectively had agreed that they would be given. Moreover, you'd have to find some way to quantify the damages – which would probably be nominal damages for "loss of amenity" (if you could somehow prove all of the preceding) once the judge finally stopped laughing, so about $2.00 would be split among your thousands of class members.

And then the judge would hit up the plaintiff with costs for such a frivolous lawsuit.

Thanks Jyrki21.

I've had judges laugh at me before. Its not usually a good sign of things to come.

I still say the Canucks got screwed. I'm still very jadded at having put my "emotional investment" out all season for the last 32 years and having incompotence and possibly dirty dealings crap all over it.

Any way time to let this die. Thanks for everyones input.