During the Colorado Avalanche’s 6-3 loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday, penalties proved to be the difference. The door to the sin bin seemingly swung one way, with the Avs on the receiving end of the wrath of the referees.
“We’re taking too many penalties,” Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said. “We’re tops in the league in penalties against.”
Edmonton had six powerplays. Bednar knows that is not a recipe for success, pointing out that teams that take a lot of penalties often do not have that much success killing them.
“If you’re trying to ask your teammates to kill five, six, seven penalties a game, it’s not going to happen,” he said. “No team does that. If you look at the penalties we’re taking, a lot of them are needless.”
Though Bednar admitted the Avalanche are to blame for many of the calls, he did think some of the ones on Wednesday were a little soft. Still, he implored his team to be better.
“I didn’t love all of them, that’s for sure,” he said. “But we’ve got to do more to create our own opportunities on the powerplay. We have got to make it tough. We’ve got to make sure we put them in situations where they’ve got to take penalties.”
Someone that almost certainly has the echo of the referees’ whistles reverberating in his ears is right wing Jarome Iginla. The officials sent him to the box on two separate occasions, both of which could have been considered questionable calls.
“I didn’t think that they were penalties, but that’s the nature of the game,” Iginla said. “I hate to be in there; and then they score two goals on them. It hurt the team.”
With his second penalty of the game, Iginla eclipsed the 1,000-minute mark for his career. Though he wished it would had come on a stronger call, the 39-year-old veteran does take some pride in the milestone.
“I guess I’ve played a long time, so it’s a little different than guys who get 1,000 in 10 years; but saying that, I take pride, over my career, in trying to compete,” Iginla told Mile High Sports. “Sometimes that leads to a few penalty minutes. Sometimes that leads to a few fights. I’ve enjoyed that competitive side of it, the battling, and I still do. You don’t want to be in there for hooking and things, but some of the battles over the years, I look back, and it’s been fun.”
