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‘Embarrassing’ diving issue weighs on new Hockey East officials coordinator Schachte

By Jim Connelly • Senior Writer • Nov. 1, 2012

Hockey East officials, such as Chris Aughe, Jeff Bunyon, Tim Benedetto and Bob Bernard, might be looking more critically at diving (photo: Melissa Wade).

We’re about a month into the Hockey East season, which means that new league coordinator of officials Dan Schachte has had equally as much time to evaluate the league.

And while he certainly likes what he sees from his crew of officials, saying he “couldn’t be happier with what these guys bring” to the table, there is one serious concern that has stood out since the first game he saw four weeks ago.

“I spend a lot of time watching the game, I’ve been to a lot of games, and diving is a problem,” Schachte said.

Schachte, who recently completed a 30-year career as an NHL linesman, said that right out of the gate, the one thing his office needs to address is a player’s feeling that he needs to embellish penalties by flopping around much like a fish that has fallen out of its fish bowl.

“It’s an issue,” Schachte said. “About 70 percent of the time when I see it happen, it’s a new kid … it’s a freshman. It’s early in the season and if the kid played like that [diving] last year, it’s going to take some time to adjust.”

Schachte didn’t want to give specifics on how he plans to address diving and embellishment. He said that he has various ideas that he is working on, and could even go to the extreme of what the NHL did to curb a similar problem a few seasons ago.

“What the [NHL] did was publish a list of [offenders] that was public knowledge around the league among the officials, among the general managers, among the coaches and other players,” Schachte said.

That solution, according to Schachte, created peer pressure among the players to keep teammates from diving and, thus, appearing on the list.

Schachte didn’t say that he specifically will go to that extreme, but if he did, you almost couldn’t blame him.

“The rules are set up right now that if a penalty isn’t called and a kid flops, you can give him a diving penalty, but generally that’s not where it happens,” Schachte said. “Where it happens, a player puts a stick on a player or hooks or holds or impedes a kid and the kid embellishes it.

“At the end of the day, matching minors doesn’t really do much. That’s not a huge deterrent.”

It also puts the officials in a tough spot.

“They lose credibility because if they give, say, two for hooking and two for embellishing, one side will say, ‘He hardly touched him,’ and the other will say, ‘He put the hook on him, why are you calling a dive?’

“So our guys are in a tough spot. It’s hard to keep credibility with that kind of a setup.”

Schachte said that options such as giving an additional 10-minute misconduct or suspending repeat offenders are appealing, but neither is supported in the current rules. “If we suspended a kid for diving, we’d have every administrator at a school right down our throat,” Schachte said.

While calling the issue complicated, Schachte also said there needs to be something done to curb diving before it becomes a true epidemic.

“It’s embarrassing,” Schachte said, summing up the issue in the most simple way.

Jack Parker calls out BC, Maine for diving
Written by Kevin Dillon
Published Dec 5, 2012

Following Saturday’s 5–2 loss to then-No. 1 Boston College, No. 7 Boston University men’s hockey coach Jack Parker said he thought his team was “frustrated” at some of the calls that went against them and some of the calls that did not go against the Eagles.

Parker was particularly upset about a few specific calls relating to diving rules, so he took his complaints to Hockey East Chief Observer Dick DeCaprio.

“It’s too late to affect the way it happened last game, but I think it will affect the way it will happen in the future,” Parker said.

One of the calls Parker did not agree with this weekend involved former BU forward Yasin Cissé, who left the team Tuesday, and BC forward Steven Whitney. At the end of the first period, Cissé was called for interfering with Whitney off a faceoff, which led to a BC power-play goal early in the second frame.

According to Parker, Whitney grabbed Cissé’s stick before diving to the ice to make it look as if Cissé interfered with him.

“There would have been no penalty on Cissé at all had the other guy not grabbed his stick and jumped up in the air,” Parker said. “BC has been doing that for years and I don’t believe it is the referee’s fault. The referee was looking right at it, the kid was coming right at him and they can’t see it happen as quickly as they have to.”

Later in the game, officials called BU for more than just a standard embellishment when senior defenseman Sean Escobedo was called for diving when his leg was taken out from underneath him as he was skating over his own blue line.

Unlike a normal embellishment call, Escobedo earned a diving penalty, which did not give BC a penalty on the play.

“There definitely should have been a tripping call,” Parker said. “If he thought that was embellishing … it was just a little bit of a swing, then call it, I don’t care. Then they both sit down. I would rather have that called than not called.

“I am saying that is not the problem. The problem really is the guy who gets touched and dives into the boards – the guy who grabs somebody’s stick and jumps up into the air.”

Teams diving to draw penalties are not anything new to the league, according to Parker. He said purposeful diving has been going on for years now, and claims that some Hockey East schools coach it.

“We had a situation — a number of situations with different players, especially BC and Maine as well,” Parker said. “They are the two teams that over the years have had a number of guys diving around. They don’t think there is anything wrong with that. They think it is up to the referee

“I don’t think there is anything wrong with them thinking that way. That is the way they coach, that is the way they believe you take advantage of the referee not being able to do this. I don’t believe that, so I get angry with it.”

Instead of leaving the decisions on diving penalties up to referees who only have a second to judge whether or not a player is falling purposefully or not, Parker explained the same plan of attack to eliminate diving from the league that he mapped out last month.

Just like in the NFL or NBA, he suggested using video review to a referee make a ruling on a play that is too difficult to make a call on in the middle of a game. If a player is caught diving, the referee would warn the coach that the next player on his team who dives will be suspended for a game.

“That Whitney situation where Whitney grabs the guy’s stick and jumps up in the air and falls down, the referee doesn’t see it … next night he is not playing,” Parker said. “That would stop him from doing that.”

BU was called for diving twice over the weekend, increasing its total of diving calls on the season to four. Escobedo has been called for a diving-related penalty twice, while junior defenseman Garrett Noonan and sophomore forward Evan Rodrigues were each whistled for embellishment once.

However, Parker said he discourages his team from taking dives to draw penalties.

“My guys know we are not encouraging it and I get pissed off if we do it,” Parker said.