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Sometimes, you just want the adult in the room to be the adult in the room. That doesn’t seem like a big ask.
That wasn’t the case in a high school boys hockey game Saturday night between the Portland Beacons — the co-op team representing South Portland, Portland, Deering and Waynflete — and Old Town/Orono at the University of Maine’s Alfond Arena.
Barely 10 minutes into the game, Beacons coach Joe Robinson disagreed with an interference penalty called on his team. He voiced his displeasure enough to earn a bench minor, giving Old Town/Orono a 5-on-3 power play.
As officials prepared to resume play, Robinson pulled his team off the ice. The Beacons went to their locker room, took off their equipment, and went home. The game goes in the Heal point standing as a 1-0 Black Bears’ win, their first victory of the season.
Monday morning, Robinson said in a text message he needed to talk to South Portland Athletic Director Todd Livingston before commenting on what happened. Speaking for the athletic directors of the four schools that feed players to the Beacons, Livingston declined to go into specifics, and said he and Portland Athletic Director Spencer Allen were gathering information.
Livingston added that he had been in contact with Mike Burnham, the executive director of the Maine Principals’ Association, and they agreed to touch base after gathering more information.
“We are currently working with the schools involved as we deal with this unfortunate situation. Once that communication has taken place then we will look at next steps,” Burnham said in an email Monday afternoon.
Gather all the information you can. Of course, this should be investigated. At the same time, there are some basic questions that can be answered now.
Does this jeopardize the rest of the Beacons season? Portland (4-12) has two games left on its regular-season schedule, against the Marshwood co-op Saturday and against Kennebunk/Wells on Feb. 19.
Does this jeopardize future seasons for the Beacons? MPA rules call for a two-year ban on competition for teams that forfeit a regular-season game, although time and again the MPA grants appeals, even for heinous infractions like hazing. So even if the two-year ban comes into play for a game that wasn’t completed, it’s likely it won’t be enforced. It seems to be a rule on paper only.
Will Robinson or his assistants face discipline for what happened? A suspension does seem in order. Robinson is a good coach, but he let his emotions get the best of him Saturday, and it cost his team. It’s a 280-mile round trip from Portland to Orono, and that’s a long drive for 10 minutes of hockey and a night of petulance.
You can’t blame the officials for wanting to call the game tightly. When these teams met at Portland’s Troubh Arena on Jan. 31, just a week before Saturday’s rematch, it was a penalty-filled mess. According to the box score posted at mainehshockey.com, the teams combined for 71 penalty minutes in the Beacons’ 3-2 win. That parade to the penalty box included three 10-minute misconduct penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct, two on the Beacons and one on Old Town/Orono. Portland also took a five-minute major for boarding.
Given that game was still fresh on everybody’s mind, it’s reasonable to expect that, yes, the refs were going to assert themselves early in an effort to keep the game from devolving into chaos. Scott Rhynold, Old Town/Orono’s coach, said he told Robinson prior to the game to expect as much.
“I had given him a friendly heads up, knowing how our game ended the last time. It was a physical game. It was competitive. I know these refs, they might call it a little tighter,” Rhynold said.
Rhynold said he recognized one of the officials as a veteran who has called games for at least a dozen years and officiated games when Rhynold played high school hockey for Presque Isle from 2009-13. So in that regard, it wasn’t the case of inexperienced varsity officials in over their heads.
With the shortage of officials in pretty much every sport these days, that can be a concern. Newcomers are often tossed into a varsity game with nowhere near enough experience.
Rhynold added that he thought the interference penalty that triggered the abrupt ending to the game was a borderline call. Even if it was, that’s no excuse for the Beacons’ refusal to complete the game.
It was Old Town/Orono’s senior night, and Robinson’s actions ended it with a thud.
“That’s probably the part I’m most disappointed with. It’s not quite our last game, but it was going to be our last competitive game of the year at our home building, and they just kind of took it away. I feel so bad for our seniors,” Rhynold said.
There are ways to voice dissatisfaction with officiating. Saturday, Robinson chose the worst way, taking the game out of his players’ hands. High school sports is finite. It ends quickly. Taking away one of those chances to play over a perceived bad call doesn’t solve anything.
Instead, it raises more questions that never needed to be asked.
Travis Lazarczyk has covered sports for the Portland Press Herald since 2021. A Vermont native, he graduated from the University of Maine in 1995 with a BA in English. After a few years working as a sports… More by Travis Lazarczyk
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