Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Lucia, "referees made the right call"

Western Collegiate Hockey Association logoImage via WikipediaThis was on Roman Augustoviz blog today.
Lucia said he felt the referees made the right call when they gave Kyle Rau a major penalty for boarding and a game misconduct for his hit on Denver forward Jason Zucker in Friday's game.

WCHA commissioner Bruce McLeod called Lucia that night, the Gophers coach said, to tell him the league was going to review the play. He watched it on video that night after not seeing it live.

The next morning Lucia said he talked to McLeod again and was told Rau would probably be suspended.

"At that time, we had the right to appeal the suspension, which would have allowed Kyle the right to play Saturday night," Lucia said. "But 99.9 [percent of the time] we probably would have lost the appeal and he would not have been allowed to play the next Friday night against Bemidji."

Lucia decided the best option was not to appeal, so he could prepare his lines better for the Beavers.

He said the difficult part of the situation was the supplemental discipline. "There were a couple of other major penalties on the weekend," Lucia said. "You can go back to incidents -- what deserves extra and what doesn't?"
After seeing the video of the Kyle Rau hit on Jason Zucker, it's good to see coach Lucia support the league decision on that Rau hit. Lucia does also make a good point, "You can go back to incidents -- what deserves extra and what doesn't?” I think that’s the question a lot of the fans are wondering as well.
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