A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words

Sharks 4, Red Wings 3; Western Semifinals, 0-2

Honestly, you couldn't find a better picture to sum up what took place in San Jose tonight. While the Red Wings skated, the Sharks were on the ice, often drawing phantom penalties, which eventually piled up to the point they were able to seize momentum in a game they trailed 3-2. And they rode that momentum to a 4-3 win.

You know, I used to respect Todd McLellan. When he was an assistant in Detroit two years ago, the Wings were aces in the faceoff circles, and their special teams were dynamic. He has successfully instilled those qualities into the Sharks since taking over as their head coach after winning the Stanley Cup with Detroit in 2008.

But apparently the years of postseason gagging have caught up to the Sharks, and McLellan decided to teach them another attribute: the art of the flop.

Feel a stick near your feet? Throw your legs out from under you.

Feel a nudge in the back? Propel yourself face first onto the ice.

Feel a stick near your wrists? Lose control of the puck and then slide down to the ice.

All of the above will goad the (as usual) braindead mouth breathers masquarading as NHL referees into calling ten penalties on the team who committed the second fewest amount of infractions in the league this season. TEN power plays for San Jose tonight. Back to back five-on-threes.

After witnessing that abomination (no surprise either that one of the refs tonight was also on hand for a previous abomination), what more can you say? I love hockey. I love the Red Wings as much as I love Michigan football. But after yet another clusterfuck courtesy of Gary Bettman's refs and the NHL's World Cup representatives, how much more emotion can one invest? How can I continue to put so much into something so blatantly broken?

In the interest of full disclosure, I expected the Sharks to win the series. Despite dispatching Phoenix with brutal efficiency in Game 7, I saw enough problems with the Wings against the Coyotes and knew they wouldn't get away with such mistakes against a foe like San Jose. The first two games have reinforced those feelings, and I have a hard time envisioning the Red Wings beating the Sharks four out of five times.

But to have the Sharks flop and dive all over the ice like a bunch of pussies - that's embarrassing, and they shouldn't have to resort to such cowardly tactics. They're supposed to be better than that. But I guess they're not, so if they went to flop their way into the conference finals, so be it. I'm about at my wit's end with the NHL and its incompetence as it is.

Abomination.

Ducks 2, Red Wings 1; Western Semifinals, 1-2

You want to know why hockey is very, very solidly behind the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball in popularity in this country? I mean, besides being stuck on a no-name network, losing an entire season to a lockout and the Dead Puck Era that strangled the fun out of the sport for a decade?

It's nights like this. Events like this. Screwjobs like this that will keep the NHL in its place in the pecking order. The casual, prospective fan gets turned off when any team, and especially the defending champions, get robbed blind by incompetent, abysmal officiating put in place by one of the worst commissioners in major American sports history. Seriously, and I say this with extreme prejudice, extreme contempt, and pure, undiluted hatred: You suck, Gary Bettman. You are a disgrace to the sport, a disgrace to the office you hold, and a disgrace in general. It took an entire lockout for you to loosen the rules to inject some excitement into the sport. And you still have rules in place that ruin the game because you put pathetic, lapdog-like people on the ice, give them striped shirts, and call them officials. In a group that includes Bud Selig and David Stern, you have the "worst commissioner" title locked up and hidden away, buddy. The clowns that you call referees are an embarrassment. Brad Stuart checks a guy behind the net with the puck, and the ref near the play does nothing, while the one all the way out at center ice, who probably didn't even know where the puck was, calls interference. A year after Tomas Holmstrom gets called for goalie interference twice when he was firmly planted outside the crease and was not touching the goalie, Ryan Getzlaf is allowed to slash Osgood in the right arm as the Ducks score their second goal. The Ducks are constantly allowed to crash the net in an attempt to drive Osgood into the goal. The Ducks are constantly allowed to punch, jab and cross check after the whistle. The penalty on Niklas Kronwall in Game 2 that resulted in a Ducks goal? Scott Niedermayer has built a Hall of Fame career using that same interference move. He perfected it and led the New Jersey Devils to the top of the NHL and ushered in the Dead Puck Era with it. And yet he still does it without penalty.

And just when you think the officiating could not be anymore incompetent, anymore of a farce...they manage to top themselves. Everybody likes to complain about the refs, in every sport. And yet tonight, Red Wings fans can legitimately say that Brad Watson determined the outcome of the game. The puck was loose, Marian Hossa poked it in, the game was tied...and then it wasn't. Instead of skating in behind the net to make sure the puck was dead, Watson made the move to blow his whistle as he skated in. He even blew the whistle AFTER the puck was in the net. And yet, because of another one of Bettman's laughably awful rules, the act of the referee moving his hand toward his mouth to blow the play dead overrules the actual blowing of the whistle. In what other sport does this apply? The answer is none, because other sports aren't run by a clown masquarading as a commissioner.

Hockey is a beautiful game. It's exciting, it's heartstopping, it's gutwrenching. It's a wonderful, awesome sport. And it will never reach its potential while the human excrement Gary Bettman is running it. His TV deal, his refs. His mess. Gary Bettman running the NHL gives hope to idiots everywhere. If you're lucky, you too can be successful at life. And you can employ people of equal stupidity to ruin a good thing.

In a perfect world, the Red Wings use this robbery as a rallying point to finally cave the Ducks' skulls in. But hey, in a perfect world, these two teams are in overtime right now and Gary Bettman is hitched on the back of a garbage truck gathering trash. In a perfect world, this scene doesn't happen: