The Edmonton Oilers lost the Stanley Cup to the better team in the Florida Panthers, but Oilers media are calling out a broken system of the NHL that heavily benefited Florida.

The Panthers proudly play a pest-style of hockey where they commit far more infractions than their opponents – but the NHL directs referees to keep penalties even, so the pest team comes out on top.
Oilers insider calls out NHL for blatant discrimination in Stanley Cup Final

Oilers analyst David Staples of the Edmonton Journal recently joined OilersNow, and laid into NHL director of Hockey Ops Colin Campbell for the state of refereeing that gave Florida an advantage in the Cup Final.

He’s responsible for the refereeing in the playoffs where they select referees based on their inability to call penalty calls. You know, this is discrimination, it’s a kind of systemic discrimination against skilled teams because it allows teams that foul the most to have an advantage.

There were five goals against Oilers: five non-calls happened, five goals against happened in that Stanley Cup final. I have never seen anything like it.

I’ve never seen anything like that. It just happened again and again and again. Bennett kicking Ekholm’s stick.

It is such an obvious penalty. Colin Campbell, he’s got to go. He’s not going because he’s Bettman’s guy, but man, he is 10 years past it.

Staples and Stauffer also referenced a previous email scandal, where Colin Campbell requested the NHL be more lenient with penalty calls against his son, Gregory Campbell – who is now assistant GM of the Florida Panthers.

The NHL’s current style of refereeing is referees to as game management, which aims to create a balanced game by calling relatively equal penalties against both teams. The problem with that philosophy is that not all teams commit equal penalties.

The Panthers’ dirty and nasty style of play to take jabs, cheap shots, hooks, holds, interference, and everything else all of the time forces the referees into a corner where they can’t call everything. The Panthers have mastered gaming the system, and the Oilers are left begging for more powerplays.

Refereeing was far from the reason the Oilers lost the Stanley Cup Final, but it’s hard to say it was a fairly officiated series.

The Oilers need to adjust their expectations for future playoffs, and maybe take a page from the Panthers book on their playoff identity.