post worthy of reading:  about the weber fine and conspiracies

 

this has nothing to do with "conspiracy" and everything to do with "playoff competition". I'm certain that if Kronwall did the same thing to them he also would have only been fined. The league is extremely hesitant to get in the middle of a playoff series that is bound to be tight beyond belief. They know as well as we do that losing Weber for game two could absolutely alter the entire series (as it should!). I think Shanahan would actually be the first to admit that he would have suspended him in either pre or regular season, but the standard is simply raised in the playoffs, whether we like it or not. As Shanahan said at the GM meeting, he looks at the playoffs as a "7 game season", meaning games and punishments have a skewed weight. I think there was an implicit message in his language that while the league is willing to take the flak of the media on this one, the line has now been drawn and folks better think twice before straying this close again. But perhaps I'm reading too much into it.

Either way, my main point is that year after year, the tin-foil hat crowd likes to act like the league is specifically targeting the Wings or something, when the league's agenda seems pretty straightforward and obvious… it's all about ratings, it's all about revenue, it's all about popularity, it's all about competition, and their policy decisions have nothing to do with specific teams as much as they have to do with hoping every single series goes 7 games and every single game goes to double OT. If taking it easy on Weber (or Kronwall or Malkin or whoever…) helps to push that agenda, they are going to simply weigh how bad the PR will be and how they will have to spin their decision and then they are going to do what they feel they need to do. That's how it works every year. Whenever a team in the playoff starts to get an advantage because they are crashing the net hard, or screening the goalie too well, or subtly interfering too well in the neutral zone, the next game the refs magically "crack down" on that advantage. The team getting shafted then thinks the league is after THEIR team because the change in standard is just so obvious, but really the league seems like they could really give a crap who advances and who wins it all as long as every game is close.

If I were to believe in any true NHL conspiracy, it would be that in the playoffs, the league basically instructs the refs to "keep it fair", "keep it close", basically mandating makeup calls and letting the score dictate how the game is called. They can easily ethically justify this to themselves by telling the refs to apply this (inherently uneven) standard evenly to all teams.