Erik Cole will fight you, punk!

Canes won 3-2 over the Wild yesterday.

And, pretty much everything that happened in this game was eclipsed by what occurred in the third period.

Yeah, so Staal gets shoved head-first from behind into the boards by Minnesota's Aaron Voros. Erik Cole sheds all unnecessary equipment and tackles/begins to fight Voros, as my main man Cole both knows what it feels like to be seriously injured like that and knows how to defend one's teammate.

So, there's some other skirmishes, and they're gradually broken up. Scott Walker gets kicked out of the game for no apparent reason (is this guy blacklisted or something?). Then Erik Cole gets kicked out.

So, Voros, who did the initial dirty play, only gets 5 for fighting and 5 for boarding. Cole gets 5 for fighting, 2 for instigating, 2 for unsportsmanlike (yeah, like sticking up for your teammate is really unsportsmanlike compared to shoving someone face first into the boards), and a game misconduct. Walker gets a game misconduct for... um, talking?

Something doesn't seem to add up here. Stupid refs.

Anyways... on Wednesday, in the Canes win over the Thrashers there were some psycho referees too. Not only was a clear-in knocked off a ref into the goal, but then, later in the game, the ref refused to stop play for Johan Hedberg even though there were, like, five guys crowded around the crease - so he had to play it, which led to a Canes goal. Which I wasn't complaining about, but it was the first time in about 5 years that I actually felt some sympathy for Atlanta.

Why is it that refs get worse and worse as the season goes on, and then almost seem to refuse to call anything in the playoffs? It's just not right.

Canes play tomorrow against Buffalo.

Erik Cole stats (Wednesday): 1 goal, 1 assist
Thursday: 1 goal
On the season: 19 goals, 25 assists