from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

The approach to NHL officiating will not change until the gatekeepers do, and neither will trust in the system. If the same people who have been overseeing the operation for years and years, if the Colin Campbell’s and Stephen Walkom’s of the hockey world are the ones charged with conducting internal reviews and charting the course, the standards will remain indecipherable.

When, for example, Edmonton’s Mike Smith surrenders a soft one, do we all add the disclaimer, “But being an NHL goaltender is a hard job?” Or, if per chance Philipp Grubauer yields another marginal goal, does the Seattle netminder defend himself by invoking the, “I bet you couldn’t have made that save” card?

Of course not. Yet every critique of NHL officiating is met with these absurd disconnects. Flying a commercial airplane is probably a pretty hard job, but we do not excuse errors in the cockpit by citing the degree of difficulty of being a pilot, do we? If an inedible meal is delivered to your restaurant table, do you smile, chew and swallow rather than returning it to the kitchen because, let’s face it, you probably wouldn’t have been able to do as good of a job?..

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Tom Wilson must be so proud that he was able to beat up Brendan Smith at the beginning of last week after finally goading him into a fight just over a month after the Carolina defenseman had suffered a fractured skull while blocking Danton Heinen’s shot below the left ear.

And what Smith, the former Ranger whose issues with Wilson track back to last May’s incident involving Artemi Panarin, was doing fighting under those conditions is anyone’s guess. Here’s a guess: the code....