Summit Series 74 Game 8 - Canadian Complaints

Frustrated Canadians falsely accusing the referee, Kompalla, of being incompetent and biased.
This is how the terrible European referees myths get started in Canada/North America.

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• Hockey
• Canada
• USSR
• Soviet
• Summit
• Series
• Referee
• Канада
• СССР
• Хоккей

[hanksnow2]

Canada made the mess of it, as usual!

[hanksnow2]

I don't think he flicked it, it looks like he slapped him in the face. Stapleton was responsible for the high sticks just after the slash he gave.

But with out this low brow style of play by Canada, the inferior team Canada would be beaten by 12 or 15 goals, that's how much better the Russians were.

[MrDaemonB]

at around 4:37 you can count 7 skaters for Canada, none of them within 20 feet of bench...good call by the ref

[unnamed00]

@hammerwielder

If Stapleton was professional and controlled his temper he would not have gotten the misconduct.

Again Kompalla called the penalty when he saw that Stapleton was cut.

[unnamed00]

@hammerwielder

Well it looks like he blew the whistle when he saw that both players had their sticks up.

When he saw that Stapleton was really bleeding he called the penalty.

All Stapleton had to do was show the blood but he chose to flick it...

[unnamed00]

@hammerwielder

Most often fans go by what the commentators say, especially in heated and confusing situations like this.

[unnamed00]

@hammerwielder

Well eventually the Canadian team realized they were wrong, but the commentators were still lost...

[hammerwielder]

@unnamed00

Kompalla called the penalty only after Mahovlich, Keon and Hull went over and pointed out his error. How is that good officiating? Keon also waved away Stapleton from the discussion and handled Kompalla's incompetence with professionalism. The commentators were not "whining over nothing"; if Kompalla had been competent, Stapleton wouldn't have had to take a misconduct penalty. This was not an isolated incident with Kompalla, he was reliably incompetent and biased against Canada.

[hammerwielder]

No, Kompalla did not signal any penalty. His arm wasn't up, he wasn't pointing at Shadrin, etc. That's why Stapleton was incensed, because while it was typical of Kompalla to call a penalty on any Canadian who moved he was slow to call Soviet infractions. If Stapleton flicked blood, he deserved a misconduct, but there was a context you ignore in terms of the history with Kompalla. Tretiak knew knew Stapleton was mild-mannered and did it out of frustration thus he showed Stapleton respect.

[hammerwielder]

@unnamed00

Chevrier, the main commentator, was a really nice guy but knew nothing about hockey. No knowledgeable Canadian put any stock in what he said during the tournament. Meeker, the color commentator, was a great player from the 40s but famously error-prone in relating facts, so what he said wasn't taken at face value either. Most Canadian fans reached their own conclusions when watching and were very critical of the play by play because it was so often uninformed.