‘WHITE GLOVE’ TREATMENT?

Ducks say refs protecting McDavid

Edmonton Oilers head coach Todd McLellan took that white glove Randy Carlyle was talking about and slapped the Anaheim Ducks bench boss upside the head with it.

“I thought we were supposed to be the team whining,” McLellan said Wednesday when asked to respond to suggestions that referees have given Connor McDavid preferential treatment in this secondround series with the Ducks. “That threw me off a little bit.” Carlyle said before the series even began that he expected the Oilers to be complaining about Anaheim cheating in the faceoff circle, then followed that up Tuesday by saying you can’t touch McDavid without drawing a penalty.

“To me, it seems like there is something of a white-glove treatment for Mr. McDavid,” Carlyle said. “The restrictions on anybody touching him seem to be a little bit higher than normal.”

It was an assertion that was quickly laughed off by the Oilers.

“I think he’s just trying to get the attention of the referees,” winger Milan Lucic said. “In saying that, with his speed and his skill, he’s going to create penalties and power plays. It’s happened all year long. He gets a step on a guy, a guy takes him down, takes away a scoring chance, that’s usually a penalty in my eyes. I think the referees have done a good job with him.

“And on the other end, you can say the same thing the other way. I think they’ve gotten away with a lot. It’s part of the gamesmanship.”

McDavid has enough to worry about on the ice that he isn’t going to be drawn into the war of words.

“It doesn’t affect me,” he said. “It’s his opinion and he has the right to have that. If that’s what he thinks, then that’s what he thinks.”

But no, he doesn’t think he or anybody else out there is getting an easy ride from the officials.

“I think the ref is going to call the game the way he sees it,” McDavid said. “That’s what every ref would do. That’s how they’re taught to ref. That’s what they’re supposed to do. That’s their job.”

If McDavid is drawing a lot of calls, McLellan said, it’s because he’s one of a few players in the league who are a step above everyone else and opponents have no choice but to step outside the rules to try to slow them down — and referees have no choice but to call infractions as they come. But if you’re keeping a ledger of the times a superstar is fouled versus times penalties are called, the defenders come out way ahead.

“I think there are two or three, maybe four players in the league who have to play through the hooking, holding and mauling and they do a tremendous job of it,” McLellan said. “Yes, they do draw some penalties, but when all is said and done it could probably be double that amount.

“The white glove part of it, I think that’s questioning the integrity of the officiating, so I’m going to stay out of that.”

Early on in his career, McDavid wasn’t getting those calls. But McDavid never said a peep.

“You have to earn their respect,” McDavid said. “I try not to do that. I try not to complain because it’s a hard game — things happen fast.”