I didn’t like the fact that the linesmen, Wally Lacroix and Todd Owen, were the same as the night before. Both of these guys made some poor calls against both teams Tuesday night, and I would have preferred to see a different crew Wednesday night, but overall the entire referee crew did very well Wednesday night.

Now, why the goalie didn’t stop the puck, no idea. But nobody in the rink heard a whistle. On the replays on the big screen, though there is no audio, it was obvious that nobody touched the puck prior to going in the goal. Yet Nissen didn’t even give a reason to the scorers why the goal was waved off. Basically the only person in the rink who knew why was Nissen. It is his perogative if he wants to explain his reasoning, but it sure would have been nice to even say it was an inadvertent whistle or something. Even the Wranglers staff were left wondering.

I can appreciate those that mention reading the rule book and growing up, but growing up also means using proper English and actually spelling out words. I do know the rules, and it has nothing to do with the rules. It has to do with being out of position, calling penalties that don’t occur, not calling blatent penalties, and losing control of a game. Obviously, referees are humans, they can’t make every call, and there’s never a perfectly called game, but when games are consistently called poorly, that reflects on the referee.

I find Jason Nissen’s work to be excellent. The comments about Jason Rollins are totally out of line. I have met Mr. Rollins and his wife. They are great people. Mr. Rollins is considered by the league to be one of the top referees, as evidenced by the fact that he was in the Finals last season, and would have officiated Game 7 if the series had gone to Game Seven.

It is easy to pretend to be a referee from the spectator section while enjoying a hot dog and beer; quite another matter to officiate from where it counts. I say congratulations to the league on maintaining a good officiating staff.

44 minutes of penalties called last night (with no fights) in the Wranglers/Condors game, not including the 2 10 minute misconducts he apparently called after the game was over. How 2 Wranglers players get misconducts during the victory celebration without anything being called against Bakersfield is a mystery to me. I have no idea what happened, they were at the other end of the ice, but Bakersfield would not leave the ice while the Wranglers were all huddled around the goal.

At any rate, Jason Nissen didn’t miss any blatent penalties, he called EVERYTHING! I can’t remember the last time that I was at a hockey game where there didn’t seem to be more than 3 minutes at a time that there wasn’t someone in the box.