Seeing Things McTavishes Way

Battle of Alberta's Andy Grabnia has come to the rescue of Oilers coach Craig McTavish pocketbook.

The Oils benchboss was recently relieved of a hefty ten grand for comments made towards referee Mick McGeough after he disallowed what would have been the Oilers tying goal in the Dallas game earlier this week.

If you recall, late in last seasons playoff drive, the Oilers were also victims of a couple of eyeball blurries that wiped out goals and almost cost them a playoff spot. I'm sure McTavish has had it up to his spectacles with bad judgement calls and nearsighted referees. Few blamed him for his outburst.

What Battle of Alberta's Grabnia has done, is set up a sort of trust fund, to pitch in and help pay McT's fine as a gesture from the hockey bloggosphere. His animated and engenious post explains it in full detail, and features a live game clip of the atrocity commited by McGeough.

The posting has gotten major coverage the internet wide and in newsprint, and created quite some controversy. Read the comments, over 90 so far, and find out what all the buzz is about.

Grabnia's quest is gathering steam, as over $400.00 have already been pledged and the story is picking up major coverage. Kudos to Mr. Grabnia for the insight and the nerve to pull this off. I urged him to extent his deadline and suggested he get an optical chain such as Hakeem Optical to subsidize the donation.

I think it would be a brilliant coup to get a major optical chain behind this push. Not only would they receive a ton of advertising promotion, so would Blogger Nation as a whole. Think of the stir it would cause! It may actually embarrass the NHL into looking at ways be better equip their officials with ways to act in such scenarios in the future.

I still can't get over the fact that McGeough (Magoo) could not see that players were not responding to any so called gloved pass in any way that would alert him to it happening. Not only did McGeough ignore that his linesman stood directly over the play, but he was adamant that his vision through a forest of legs and skated was better than his cohort. Unbelievable!

Grabnia has set up the fund so that if McT refuses the cash, a donation in his name will be made to the CNIB. Bloggers unite!