I’ll post my thoughts on the Devils moving forward at some future date, obviously there’ll be plenty of time to speculate on what happens in an offseason after Jersey’s Team has missed the playoffs for the second season in the last three years.  But after Pete DeBoer‘s uncharacteristic meltdown at the Garden today getting two bench minors including getting teed up and ejected with fifteen seconds remaining in a 4-1 loss, I do feel compelled to add my own two cents on ref Chris Rooney, who’s been in the Devils’ crosshairs since Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals last year when his questionable five-minute major call on Steve Bernier and an overall lopsided game penalty-wise in favor of the Kings was annoying then.  Understandably the team took a collective pass on ripping the officiating in the wake of a Kings championship.

After a series of questionable calls and non-calls by that same ref (and against the same team) in a do-or-die game for the Devils this year though, their normally cool veneer blew over.  When Ilya Kovalchuk got ‘clearly’ tripped in the first period on what would have been a two-on-one not only was there no call but DeBoer got a bench minor for making his feelings known on that, turning an early power play into a 4-on-4.  Patrik Elias got an unsportsmanlike minor in the third period for complaining about another missed call.  Another ticky-tack call on our futille attempt to get back in the game down 4-1 with the net empty in the third period was probably the last straw for the head coach, who let Rooney have it with both barrels during the final stoppage of play with just over half a minute remaining and got sent off Earl Weaver-style.

I’m not in any way saying all these calls were the reason we lost, clearly the Rangers were the better team, have been a terrific team since the trade deadline, and the Devils’ last two months proves they have some work to do if they want to get back to being a contender next year.  Again, I’ll get to that at a later date though.  I don’t want to accuse Rooney of bias or say something worse, but the fact that now we have two straight season ends marred by this guy making one-sided calls does raise both eyebrows.  Especially when he can’t wait to tee up everyone on one side in what most refs know is going to be a heated game.  When even Pierre McGuire can put two and two together and know what’s up, you know there’s an issue.  This game – and Game 6 of the SCF last year – looked like the reffing in Remember The Titans when that one official was calling everything against the integrated team.

As far as the Devils go, I don’t care about a fine (then again it ain’t my money) – they need to publicly call out this guy and take his officiating to task.  Enough is enough, and quite honestly the Devil fans who just saw their team’s season come to an end also deserve an explanation on why the normally cool-headed coach and longest-tenured skater ‘both’ melted down in what amounted to an elimination game for us.  None of this ‘I cannot talk about it…I would love to but I cannot talk about it’ former coach Jacques Lemaire famously said after one badly reffed game in the 2009 playoffs.