'The worst refereed game I ever saw ': Don Cherry blasts Game 2 refs in Oilers vs Panthers

Yahoo

09-06-2025

An excellent episode of The Don Cherry's Grapevine Podcast is out, with legendary hockey coach and commentator Don Cherry and his co-host son Tim going over the history of NHL crease crashers and goalie abusers, from Gary Dornhoefer of the Broad Street Bullies and Wayne Cashman of the Big, Bad Bruins from the truculent 1970s to their modern day incarnation, Sam Bennett of the Florida Panthers.
Cherry, an elder statesman of NHL commentary having played, watched, coached and commented on hockey for almost all of his 91 years, offered up that in all his years he'd never seen refereeing so poor as in Game 2 of the Edmonton Oilers-Florida Panthers series.
'That was the worst refereed game I think I ever saw,' Cherry said, 'It was that one. It was unbelievable.'
Chris Rooney and Jean Hebert were the referees in the game.
Cherry's son and co-host Tim pointed to two missed calls in particular that contributed to goals against the Oilers, the first and last goals of the game.
On the first, Oilers d-man Mattias Ekholm lost his stick blocking a shot, then Bennett kicked it away from Ekholm, before the Panthers aggressor taking a pass to score.
It was an obvious no-brainer of an interference penalty on Ekholm that went uncalled.
Three minutes before the final goal in the second overtime period, Edmonton's Viktor Arvidsson broke in on what might have developed into a Grade A scoring chance but was stopped by the sixth Florida man on the ice, again an obvious no-brainer of a too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty, and one with major consequences in the flow of play.
'There should have been a power play,' Don Cherry said.
'I think Florida should have won that game, but the two goals they got (the first and the last) shouldn't have counted, I don't think,' Tim Cherry said, with his father agreeing.
Both Don and Tim Cherry also agreed that Rooney and Hebert got one call right, the interference call on Sam Bennett for falling on Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner.
Florida commentators that the Oilers and Skinner had a plan for Skinner to flop and play hurt if Bennett made any contact. But Don Cherry framed Bennett's flop on Skinner as a textbook tactic from a net-front attacker.
'Bennett did fall on him,' Cherry said.
Added Tim, 'You always said when you were watching Bennett, you said that's nothing new because that's what Cash (Wayne Cashman) and Gary Dornhoefer used to do.'
Said Cherry: 'Cashman, no matter no matter what happened, he'd fall on you.'
They then played a clip of Montreal Canadiens Hall of Fame goalie Ken Dryden talking about Dornhoefer's tactics.
'Dornhofer, he got me madder than anybody,' Dryden said. 'And the thing of it was that he had a terrific routine. I mean, he would always stand outside of the crease. The crease is so small, there's no room to stand inside it anyway. So he was within his rights to stand where he was. But the remarkable thing about him is that it didn't matter which direction you pushed him in. You could push him from behind, and he would still fall backwards into the goalie. And so long as the referee saw him falling or being pushed, it didn't matter where and which direction he was being pushed. If he fell on the goalie, you know, there was no problem so far as the referee was concerned.'
1. Dryden is as smart an observer of hockey as there's ever been, and it's hilarious how he nailed the tactics of these expert goalie bashers, from Dornhoefer to Bennett.
If you watch Bennett, it's hard to tell if he's mashing the goalies on purpose, but in the penalized Game 2 play it's worth noting that Oilers d-man Ekholm pushes him one way, but Bennett somehow collapses in another direction, as if by miracle right on top of Skinner.
Bennett is an obvious master of this dark art. His problem now is that NHL referees will are on to him.
2. For all the Panthers fans and pundits who will immediately trot out that Cherry is obviously a big-time homer with it comes to the Oilers, that's not at all the case. He's a big time homer for sure, but his preoccupation in life has been with two teams, his home province Toronto Maple Leafs and his old team, the Boston Bruins, where Cashman used to play.
Cherry is also a huge fan of rock 'em, sock 'em hockey. He loves the rough stuff. He just knows what players like Bennett do and how they think. He's giving us a description here, a dose of reality.
Well done, Grapes.
Rooney and Hebert, no so much. They need to rethink their approach to letting go obvious penalties that would be called 99 per cent of the time in the regular season, if not the early rounds of the playoffs.
Why choke on their whistles now?