Buffalo Rising Online

Apr 18th 2007, 12:22pm By Dave Staba

Thankfully, for once, for now, the complaints about officiating aren’t coming from Buffalo’s locker room or coach, but from the opposition.

And instead of anyone trotting out the tired argument that National Hockey League executives spend time figuring out ways to deny the Sabres what’s rightfully theirs, New York Islanders coach Ted Nolan suggested quite the opposite after Buffalo’s 3-2 win in Game 3:

"Certain teams get certain calls, and that's life. Some people get breaks and some don't, and we're that group right now. We're not going to get any breaks."

Nolan was talking about the penalty calls that went against his team, as well as the after-further-review goal by Thomas Vanek at 8:38 of the second period, a wild 20 minutes that included all five of the game’s scores.

Coaches – particularly good ones like Ruff and Nolan – rarely say anything just to say it. Nolan’s intent was likely two-fold, meant to spark a team that managed only two shots in the third period of a home game it had a strong chance to tie while politicking for friendlier treatment from the officials during Game 4.

Nolan, who perfected the nobody-likes-us spiel while coaching in Buffalo, the sporting-conspiracy capital, might achieve his first goal. The Isles, who tore it up to win Game 2 in Buffalo after a rather flat opener, have responded well to Nolan’s psychological tactics all year. They also know a loss tonight at Nassau Coliseum would all but doom their hopes for an upset.

That possibility may have already expired, wrote Newsday’s Mark Herrmann.

Monday night was another reality check. It said that the Islanders lost what might have been their best chance to win this series, that they can't afford to take six minutes in penalties on one play (which led to the deciding goal), that home-ice advantage works better when the home side has the better team.

As for the referees and linesmen, who have been diplomatically dreadful through three games, we’ll see. Ruff has effectively lobbied via the media through past Stanley Cup tournaments, but seems to realize that such complaints are less likely to have an impact coming from the coach of the team with the league’s best record than from a heavy underdog.

Islanders fans drew as much attention as their team during Game 3, with a few yelling something or other during a moment of silence for the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre earlier in the day and some throwing bottles and other garbage on the ice to protest a penalty call.

George Vecsey of the New York Times decried the ugliness in a column today (the work of the newspaper’s columnists are available to “Times Select” members, but here’s the link anyway. For those who can get there, a cephalopod is a class of mollusks that includes the octopus). Vecsey recalled the class of the Islanders teams that won four straight Stanley Cups in the early 1980s, without getting overly wistful:

Not that it was all so wonderful. I still remember heading down to the locker room late in a Stanley Cup finals game against the Oilers and hearing some of our Long Island rednecks heap racial abuse on Grant Fuhr. Unable to resist having a conversation with some vicious, drunken bigots, I asked them why they had to act that way.

“We’re trying to help our team,” one of them blustered.

Apparently, some of them have multiplied and gone forth onto the Island, with their descendants heaving refuse onto the ice, nearly a quarter of a century later. Not everybody, mind you. Just a handful. Just enough to make the whole Islander experience a little less pleasant.

Nassau Coliseum won’t be a particularly pleasant place for the Sabres tonight, either. But if they play like they did Monday while keeping an eye out for stray beer bottles, it will be the last time they have to visit there this year.

(Photo by Joe Cascio.)