An NHL referee's hot mic may have picked up an attempt to deliver a make-up call (UPDATE)
The NHL is looking into it.
It’s more than likely happened any number of times in the sports world: an official or referee or umpire completely botches a call and then finds a way to make it up later in the game (perhaps less so in the age of instant replay).
And that could be the case here, but we lack a lot of context.
During Tuesday night’s Nashville Predators game against the Detroit Red Wings, the Preds’ Viktor Arvidsson was whistled for a tripping call. On the Predators’ FOX broadcast, right before the game went to commercial, you can hear someone say, “It wasn’t much but I wanted to get a [expletive] penalty against Nashville early in the …”
(WARNING: as you can tell, there’s NSFW language in the video.)
Interesting hot mic from NHL official pic.twitter.com/KJ57EP6KQP
— Justin Loncaric (@jb0ne22) March 24, 2021
That’s the voice of one of the officials, and Colin Campbell, the NHL’s director of hockey operations, had this to say about what the league would do:
NHL director of hockey operations Colin Campbell would not comment on one of the referees appearing to admit to an even-up call in the Nashville-Detroit game tonight, but did acknowledge, "Investigating this incident."
— Ken Campbell (@THNKenCampbell) March 24, 2021
Here’s the call, by the way:
— Big T Screenshots (@bigtscreenshots) March 24, 2021
Look: we don’t have much more context than that snippet. There could be more to that sentence that explains it, but it sure sounds like one of those make-up calls. We’ll see if the NHL agrees.
UPDATE: The NHL announced referee Tim Peel would no longer work games for the league.
Referee Tim Peel no longer will be working NHL games now or in the future. https://t.co/mrnDc61W5P pic.twitter.com/tKsg2SwGh8
— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) March 24, 2021
