Stanley Cup Notes : Sather Seethes at the Officiating

EDMONTON, Canada —  Edmonton Oiler Coach Glen Sather broke a promise and a self-imposed silence by ripping the officials after Thursday night’s Game 6 in the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup series.

Sather was furious at referee Dave Newell, both for calls Newell did make and for some he did not.

“This game tonight was decided by refereeing,” Sather said angrily after the Flyers had beaten the Oilers, 3-2.

“You can continue to bitch and complain about it--and we’ve done very little complaining--but we’re at the point and time now that we’re going to have to start making some noise about it, because we’re not getting satisfaction the way it is.

“I told Jim Gregory (the NHL’s executive director of hockey operations) I wouldn’t complain about it before the series got started. But I guess I can’t keep every promise.”

There were several points Sather wanted to make in regard to the officiating, but three main ones emerged:

--Philadelphia goaltender Ron Hextall’s two-handed slash to the legs of Edmonton’s Kent Nilsson in Game 4.

--The head butt that the Flyers’ Brad McCrimmon used on the Oilers’ Glenn Anderson in Game 6.

--A high-sticking call on Anderson that yielded the power play in which the Flyers scored the tying goal Thursday night.

Regarding Hextall’s slash, which brought the goaltender a five-minute major, Sather said, “Hextall should’ve had a 10-minute match penalty the other night and didn’t get it. He shouldn’t even be playing today.”

The head butting incident resulted in double minors to both McCrimmon and Anderson, but Sather wanted McCrimmon to get a major, which is the rule for head butting.

Anderson’s high-stick was retaliatory. Peter Zezel had taken Anderson into the boards hard, and Zezel’s stick caught Anderson in the neck.

Newell didn’t see that, but he did see Anderson’s stick hit Zezel--who appeared to have discovered wingless flight as he dived to the ice.

“One guy head-butts another player on our team, and he gets two minutes and the referee wasn’t even going to call it,” Sather said. “To sit here and complain about the refereeing is not a very professional thing to do. But in our dressing room--which we share with the ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ television crew because there isn’t enough room in this building--the television commentators are complaining because the guy didn’t get a match penalty for head butting.

“I mean, there’s millions of people across Canada and the United States who saw the game the way we saw it. If the referee doesn’t know the rules, there’s something wrong.”

As every referee in the NHL knows, the unwritten rules are to overlook penalties late in a close game, no matter how flagrant.

The referee who witnessed Hextall’s slash, Andy vanHellemond , said that he would have called a match penalty, thus ejecting Hextall from the game, but he knew he’d receive little support from league officials and owners.

The real problem with officiating is the double standard set by the league. Anything goes in the final minutes of a game . . . and in the playoffs.

Stanley Cup Notes The Flyers took great delight in ruining the Oilers’ planned victory parade last week in Game 5. Now Philadelphia has planned its own victory parade, no doubt giving Edmonton even more incentive to win Game 7 Sunday night.

The Flyer organization has been hearing criticism from the media covering the Stanley Cup that the use of a videotape of the late Kate Smith singing “God Bless America” as a good luck charm is in bad taste. Nevertheless, the Flyers did it again in Game 6. “We got about 100 phone calls from fans, asking us to play it again,” Jay Snider, the Flyers’ president said. “I had fans calling and screaming, calling my office. When you get that many phone calls, it’s a barometer. We’re here for our fans. They wanted it, so we put it up there. Did you see how the fans reacted?” The fans in the Spectrum went wild, and the Flyers won. And Kate Smith is 58-9-2. From John Brogan, the Flyers’ assistant to the president: “Did we stop saluting the flag when Betsy Ross died?”

The Flyers used another psychological ploy before Game 6. As he had before Game 4, Coach Mike Keenan brought the Stanley Cup into the Flyer dressing room after the morning practice. According to Rick Tocchet, the Flyers used the Cup to toss tape balls into.