Brind’Amour, whose Hurricanes are the top seed in the Eastern Conference, first raised the topic after a first-round sweep of Ottawa. That came after Senators forward Ridly Greig delivered two sucker punches to Hurricanes defenseman Sean Walker — the second an uppercut to the face — while Walker was engaged with Senators forward Warren Foegele.
Greig wasn't penalized in that 4-2 series-closing loss, though the NHL later suspended Greig for two regular-season games. Compounding matters, Brind'Amour said, was the fact the Hurricanes emerged from that sequence shorthanded. He suggested having someone work solely to monitor replays and assist on-ice officials.
“The only reason (Greig) did that was because he looked, no one's watching, doesn't get called for it, and we somehow ended up short on that,” Brind'Amour said. “That's wrong. That's not right. Just get it right."
The issue is how best to accomplish that if expanded replay usage is one day adopted by the league.
“That’s a good question because like a lot of times guys get away with stuff in there,” Buffalo Sabres forward Josh Dunne said about more replay reviews of scrums in particular.
“Some guy starts, another guy gets the penalty for it," he said. "It’s hard, it’s a hard line. It’s why it’s so much on the judgment of the refs where it’s like they can only see what they see, where it’s like you never really know how these things get going.”
His coach, meanwhile, chuckled that he's “not a huge fan of another video review."
“I don't mind Rod's thinking at all,” said Lindy Ruff, whose Sabres are facing Montreal in Round 2. “I just think, boy, if now we're going to review something, we start reviewing scrums, I just think players will start taking acting lessons.”
Then again, some of that is already built into the game. Brind'Amour proved prophetic in pointing that out before Game 1 against the Flyers.
“It is impossible to referee our sport live, it really is — it's just everything's happpening so fast, now you’re getting embellishment everywhere,” Brind’Amour said then. “Sticks aren’t even coming close to you, they’re doing this (leans his head back) because why? Because if this goes like this (raises arm), you’re getting a call. But if you've got a guy on the review that said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s embellishment,’ it would be out of the game."
Days later, Hurricanes forward Jordan Martinook was penalized for high sticking while replays showed Flyers defenseman Nick Seeler grabbing Martinook's stick and essentially hitting himself in the face to sell the call.
Dunne said he worried about the idea of slowing the game too much with more replay reviews, while Colorado Avalanche forward Brock Nelson said he largely “liked where the game is at.”
“I don't want to make too many adjustments or critiques to the game,” Nelson said before the Avalanche opened its series against Minnesota.
“I’m a traditionalist. The more rules you make, the more you have," said Anaheim Ducks coach Joel Quenneville, whose team is battling the Vegas Golden Knights in Round 2. "There’s always some extenuating consequences off of things like that. We got a lot of rules, so either way, I like to just get it right and move on. Either way it is, we’ll move on.”
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AP Hockey Writer John Wawrow in Buffalo, New York, and AP Sports Writers Mark Anderson in Las Vegas and Pat Graham in Denver contributed to this report.
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AP NHL playoffs: and
