John Tortorella Almost Had To Homicide A Ref After He Changed His Mind About Calling A Penalty
Dave Reginek. Getty Images.It's been a while since we've had a good ol' fashioned Torts meltdown on the bench. He's been much more subdued this season than in previous years. I don't know if it's because he knows this team is still just rebuilding or what, but there have been a few moments this year where I thought Torts would have lost his shit on the refs but he opted to just chuckle and calmly tell them to fuck off.
Last night was not one of those instances…
I mean you can hear it clear as day on the broadcast. Everybody in the arena saw it. Buddy had his fingers pointing towards the spot in the rafters where Sergei Fedorov's jersey should be hanging in Little Caesars Arena.
Kenny Albert says "penalty coming up against the Red Wings". Then Eddie O says the arm went down, you hear some whistling, and all hell breaks loose.
There are a couple of things here that legitimately saved that ref's life. For starters--the fact that the Red Wings didn't score on the empty net as the Flyers were bringing Ersson to the bench for the extra attacker. Secondly--that no penalty ended up getting called on the Flyers for "too many men" because Sam Ersson originally came to the bench once he saw the ref's arm go up to call a penalty on Detroit.
Fortunately this one goes down as a "no harm, no foul" scenario since the refs turned on their brains and made sure not to call the penalty on the Flyers for having the extra attacker out there. And the Flyers ended up on the powerplay like 7 seconds later thanks to a hooking call against Patrick Kane. But could you imagine if the refs went ahead and called "too many men" on the Flyers there? I think Torts was already seeing enough red at that moment where he'd have to hop over the boards and beat the brakes off of the refs himself. I just don't see a way where that series of events unfolds without Torts actually assaulting an official. Kinda feels like we got robbed of an all-time moment in hockey history.
Sidenote: We were also robbed of this insane Owen Tippett goal ever being remembered in Flyers' history considering it ended up coming in a loss.
Disgusting goal from Tippett. But unfortunately, the Flyers played like dog shit for about 55 minutes last night outside of a few minutes in the 3rd period. Brutal night for the Flyers, gross loss where they never looked like they were fully ready to play a game. Back at it tonight.