Referees continue to show bias against Edmonton Oilers

Last night in the Oilers vs Kraken game, we saw some brutal refereeing in the name of «managing the game». Even though it was a very chippy game with many penalties, that isn't an excuse for terrible refereeing.

This was the first example of that, how they decide not to call a holding penalty on McDavid here, just because he had already drawn two in the game. Refs are scared to call too many penalties drawn by star players because they're scared of being accused of preferential treatment, but they end up swinging back to the other end and screwing over teams just because their star players can draw penalties.




Then there was the obvious one at the end of the game, where Foegele gets penalized here for seemingly nothing. The refs then toss him and Borgen from the game just because they don't want things to escalate, ruining Foegele's chance to score a memorable first NHL hattrick. This is Foegele's reaction to the fake call that the red made against him:


He obviously wasn't happy with the call, and went over to the ref to protest the call that had been made against him. These kinda of calls just facilitate inconsistency in refereeing, and the sport should not be at the mercy of calls made seemingly to even things up in the game. Call the game the way it's supposed to be called, as that is the job of a referee.