The 32 Thoughts podcast Monday morning began with the suspension and fine the league laid down on Flyers coach John Tortorella for “refusing to leave the bench when instructed by Wes McCauley.” Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek discussed the issue, with Friedman stating he was laughing at the incident before receiving a call saying the incident “would be a problem” and “taken very seriously.”
Friedman believed the two-game suspension (and $50,000 fine) to be a “stiff punishment, a really stiff punishment” considering the Flyers’ playoff race and Tortorella not behind the bench for games against San Jose and Toronto this week. He also said the NHL’s refusal to allow officials, in this instance McCauley and fellow ref Brandon Schrader, to speak “really hurts them.”
“This one in particular, if I was an official I would want the opportunity to tell my side of the story,” Friedman said. “The reason is I think that plays like this, if you watch that game and you were familiar with what was happening, this is what I think occurred and nobody has told me I’m wrong about this. I think there was a young referee (Schrader) who got a bit overwhelmed at the moment which can happen and Wes McCauley, who became the focal point of all of this, stepped in and said, ‘I’m going to protect my teammates.’
“However because nobody will say this it just makes it look like the referees are thin-skinned and made a situation worse. You can’t criticize them, they’re not accountable and they made this situation worse. If Wes McCauley or Branden Schrader is allowed to come out and say, ‘Look we had a situation here and we didn’t want to let it escalate and it was getting too far out of control and Tortorella has to leave the playing field or ice surface quicker.’ Maybe not everybody would agree but I think everybody would say, okay at least we got an answer here and at least the officials are accountable.”
“We don’t get any of that, I think situations like this, they erode…referees and officials take a beating all the time, that’s the name of the game and not all of it is deserved. But when you’re doing this and you can’t even hear from them and can’t get an explanation, like I said, I think it erodes the confidence in the officials even more. And again if I was an official in the sport I would want in a case like this to be able to say, ‘This is why this was a problem.’
Friedman, who said the Flyers will “lean” into the fine and suspension with an “us against the world” outlook, said Tortorella’s “a polarizing guy” but because “this happened in a situation where a couple of calls went sideways it makes him look like the victim in this case. And I don’t think that’s what the NHL or the officials want.
“I don’t think it’s good for the officials when Tortorella gets this serious a suspension at this time of year when his team is fighting for the playoffs and you could make a real case that the whole thing was created by just an official having a bad night. But because they’re not seen as accountable like Tortorella is getting this suspension, I don’t think it’s good for the officials. I don’t I really don’t. I think it erodes confidence in them.”
When Marek asked if Friedman thought the officials would relish an opportunity to explain their thought process, Friedman said he has gotten different answers from a bunch of officials. “I think overall it’s pretty clear by this point that the league doesn’t want them to do it,” Friedman said. “I think it almost becomes a crutch in the sense that, ‘Oh the league doesn’t want us to do it so there’s not much we can say.’
