How something is perceived can come from confirmation bias. When Ron MacLean said that Tampa Bay would not like having a local referee calling game four in Montreal because of a young referee, Francois Charron, from Gatineau (by the Quebec/Ontario border) made the difficult, but correct call on a goaltender interference call that cost Tampa Bay a goal in game three. Charron made the correct call. Many thought that he made the incorrect call because they are not familiar with the proper application of goaltender interference, but that is another problem. The bigger issue is confirmation bias and how it colours everything we see and hear.
If you go into something thinking that *blank* is against you, it will be obvious to you that *blank* is against you. This is simply not true. The world is not out to get you. To imply that referees are not making calls because of where a game is being played is wrong. There are deeper issues when a team is not getting calls; either the officiating is terrible for both teams or a team does not have the puck.
CBC made note in their broadcast that the Habs had something like 8 more minutes on the power play throughout the series. You know why that was? Because they had the puck about 55% of the time, making it easier for the Habs to be fouled. There is no bias in that; the better team usually gets more power play time as they have the puck more, plain and simple.
Do referees make mistakes? Yes. Is it based on being from the area and should the NHL guard against that? No. Instead the NHL should make sure that their referees know the rulebook like the back of their hand and discipline and retrain them when they do not call it correctly.
Did Charron or Francois St-Laurent make any calls that were not in the rulebook to screw over the Lightning? No. Did the Lightning lose a game because a French referee made the difficult, but correct call in Montreal? Maybe. Did having two French referees calling games at the Bell Centre on two separate nights adversely affect the series? No. Did many people not think that the Montreal Canadiens were capable of playing like they did and therefore look for other factors in their success? Possibly.
As professionals referees are expected to call the game by the rulebook and not be affected by their childhood allegiances. Just because a referee grew up in a certain area does not mean that they were fans of their local team because that is not how one becomes a fan. Professionals will kick their childhood heroes out of games if they do something illegal. Just because someone is from a certain area or speaks a certain language does not mean that they are a fan of that team or that they will not make difficult calls, it means that they are from that area or cheered for that team growing up.
To imply that referees should not call games because of that is allowing yourself to look for biases in their calls before they even make the call. If that was what Ron MacLean was implying when he said that the NHL should have not assigned a ref from the region for games 3 and 4 than he is wrong. If Tampa felt as though they were not getting calls because one of the referees was from the area, than they are coming into the game with a perception of the referee and if a bad call had happened in game four, than that perception would have fulfilled and the perceived bias would have been confirmed.
The Montreal Canadiens as a team played well enough to earn the sweep. The Tampa Bay Lightning did not play well enough to win. The referees did not change that. The referees did not affect the outcome of the series. For once the NHL can say that the players on the ice did and that in itself is a good thing. Instead of looking for anything that can be perceived as a bias and finding then finding anything to confirm this bias is cherry-picking.
The NHL does not pull for Toronto because their video is based out of there. The New York Rangers are not treated differently because head offices are in New York. The NHL tries to run a fair outfit, and they manage to do that most of the time.
TL;DR there is this thing called confirmation bias and when you perceive that there is a bias you will find it, even if there is nothing to see.
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