I'm sure everyone's heard by now about the wonderful jobs that the NHL's referees are doing of maintaining their high standards on what constitutes clean play; for the most part, the parade to the penalty box has continued straight on from the regular season. But every so often, you'll see refs let some glaring penalties go, and what do the commentators tell you? "Oh, they're letting them play! It's good old-fashioned hockey!"

Well, that's good old-fashioned BS.

I'm not saying that I like seeing 57 penalties each game, but I would like to see a little more consistency out of the refs. If they want to let a few more hits go, whatever, but let them go for everyone, not jsut when you feel like taking a night off. And there are some disgusting examples of penalties that should be called no matter what the situation - take tonight's San Jose / Edmonton tilt. Late in the second overtime, Shark defenceman Scott Hannan put Oiler forward Shawn Horcoff in a headlock from behind and put him down to his knees, then practically sat on Horcoff's head. The ref was standing fifteen feet away, looking straight at them, with no call. I don't care if it's the second overtime of Game 7 in the Finals, you call that penalty. Granted, the Oilers got away with a few bad ones too, but that's no excuse; all the glaring ones should have been called. Now, a penalty was assessed to Jarret Stoll in the dying minutes of that period after he took down Jonathan Cheechoo (robbing him of a gimme of a scoring chance), but one has to wonder if the referees weren't just showing Gary Bettman that they still know how to blow a whistle; after all, the commish did say that if they didn't call the penalties, they wouldn't be reffing any more of these playoffs.

It all makes you wonder: what's the use of a two-referee system if the only guys blowing the whistles are the linesmen?