Paul Stewart has been around the NHL block a few times and has seen it all. He’s certainly seen his share of flopping and diving, and he would certainly love to see the tactic out of the game of hockey.
The former NHL referee — and Boston native — was on Yahoo’s Puck Daddy radio on Monday to talk about a lot of things, but most specifically diving in the NHL. On a day in which Colin Campbell promised that the league and the referees would try to clean up the diving problem, Stewart insisted it’s bigger than just giving it increased attention.
“Basically what it comes down to is that everybody hates it when it happens to their team, but when the kid gets back to the bench for your team, everybody goes, ‘Way to go Johnny, way to go,'” he said. “What we need to do is stop having double standards.
“What we need to do is have a perspective of what’s acceptable and what isn’t acceptable. I used to tell guys, ‘Get up or I’ll skate over your head.’ Or I’ll go over to the coach, like I could remember saying to Jacques Martin one night in Ottawa, ‘If I have to be guessing all night, you’re not going to like it.’ So it basically is something that morality-wise, each coach has to coach and instill in their players.”
Stewart also said that diving makes a referee’s job much more difficult, especially given players’ size and speed. However, Stewart said that he would do whatever he could to keep players from diving during his officiating career.
“I used to have deals with Theo Fleury and [Dino] Ciccarelli because they were famous for ‘gravity issues,’ and John Carter in Boston. I used to say, ‘stay on your feet and I’ll give you the green light,'” he told the show. “If you start flipping and flopping, and try to show me up, I’m gonna let Kjell Samuelsson or Scott Stevens or whomever run you over and I’m gonna look the other way.”
Be sure to check out the highly entertaining interview below for more, including Stewart’s reasoning for calling the NHL playoffs a “hoedown in northern Tennessee.”
