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My text messages blew up the other day, asking me for my views on the clock debacle in the recent Columbus vs. Chicago game that caused Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella to go on a postgame rant and the NHL's Department of Hockey Operations to issue a response. There's a lot to unpack here, so I'll go point-by-point.

1. A mistake was made.

No matter how much we automate the game, hockey is still a game that is played, coached, officiated (by on-ice and off-ice officials) and administered by human beings. Humans make mistakes. In this case, there should have been roughly an extra second put back on the clock.

2. NHL clock not automatically synched to whistles.

It amuses me sometimes how folks rant and rave about wanting more consistency on the officiating side but lack a basic understanding of the Rule Book and procedures. In the NBA, the game clock is synched to the referee's whistle. In the NHL, that is not the case.

The on-ice referees can, at their own discretion, instruct the off-ice crew (which includes running the game clock) to add or deduct time off the clock. They can also get clock-related assistance from the crew in Toronto. However, this is most typically done late in each period, when referees tend to be the most vigilant about having the clock set as accurately as possible.

Over the course of pretty every game in the league, there are few situations per game where a fraction of a second or a second-plus are not in exact synch with where the clock "ought" to be. If we are now to be hyper-vigilant about it and truly want consistency, adopt the NBA system of setting the clock exactly to the whistle.

As NHL Hockey Ops notes correctly, a too-many-men on the ice penalty is not a delayed call, where the infraction time is measured by a touch-up and blowing of the whistle. The challenge here is to determine when the violation was spotted and play blown dead relative to when the clock was stopped.

In years past, back in the days when there was low-glass or no glass at the scorer's table, the off-ice officials had no problem hearing the whistle in real time. Nowadays, this can depend on where the whistle is actually sounded. I have instructed young officials, when blowing plays down around the net, to get in the habit of waving their arms in addition to blowing the whistle.

Overkill? Maybe. But it's easy to see from anywhere in the arena, and it adds a visual cue to when play stops on top of the sound of the whistle. (It also helps in getting calls synched in the event of a defective whistle, which happens from time time, and is part of the rationale for the NHL's rule that play is dead at the discretion of the referee and not just at the time of a whistle).

In lieu of adopting the NBA's clock management system of being set directly to the whistle, the physical gestures can help with determining exact stoppage times.

3. Selective outrage.

I have a lot of respect for John Tortorella (see next point). Somehow, though, I doubt Torts would have been all that upset over the clock if, instead of scoring a goal just after the buzzer, the Blue Jackets had iced the puck and Chicago had scored a short-handed goal right off the draw -- only for the clock to have hit 0.0 before the puck crossed the goal line.

The off-ice crew in Columbus, although NHL employees, is based in that city just as all such crews are around the league. The game-clock expiration simply worked against the home team in this case. There was no bias by the clock managers nor did the on-ice referees set out to screw the Blue Jackets by not adding time after the too-many-men penalty on Chicago.

Because clock management tends to be more vigilant in the final minute of each period -- during which time is measured in tenths of a second and not whole seconds -- there are not many situations where a discrepancy is significant enough to mean the difference between a goal counting or not counting. Besides, we're talking about roughly one second here. There was 64:59 otherwise whereby no one was going to stand at a postgame podium and make the clock their number one takeaway about the game.

Next time a goal is scored after time expires in a period, shall we go back through entire period to determine if every stoppage was timed precisely or if a cumulative extra second or two over the 20 minutes was lost to estimation?

4. No problem with Tororella speaking his mind.

When I was still an active NHL referee, I dealt with Tortorella. I liked him off the ice and, to this day, respect him as a coach. Most of my officiating brethren -- both active and retired -- who have worked Torts' teams' games agree with me. Yes, he is emotional and hot-tempered. Yes, he can push your buttons and test how much you'll push back. No, he doesn't hold back if he's unhappy. But it's never personal. And once he says his piece, it's over and done.

He's not one to hold grudges with officials or bring up past disagreements. That is showing respect, and he gets the same respect in return.

In this situation, I do not blame him for speaking his mind, nor do any of the NHL refs and linesmen that I know. It probably should have been handled privately rather than being aired in the heat of the moment but even there, it was never a personal attack or an assault on the officials' basic competency. It was a gripe about a particular mistake proving costly, and the emotion was understandable.

When the NHL forbade its officials from speaking to the media after games -- along with taking their names off the back of their jerseys -- it tried to balance the scales by prohibiting players and coaches from publicly criticizing their calls.

Personally, I was strongly against both policies, and remain so to this day. I never had a problem with answering to a reporter if there was call to explain. I also didn't have a problem with being criticized, as long as the criticism was fair: specific to a call, not personal, etc.

5. NHL response was muddled.

I wasn't quite sure what NHL Hockey Ops was getting at in its lengthy response to Tortorella's comments. It was basically a word salad with a few pertinent aspects and various irrelevancies that perhaps were intended to divert attention from the main point. There was a bit too much passing the buck in the response, in my opinion. This was not a blameless situation. Things could have been handled better. It's OK to admit that.

I don't think that including a knock on Tortorella's professionalism as part of the response was a good look for the league. Let's put it this way. I couldn't imagine the late Jim Gregory or Brian O'Neill doing that in a similar situation. They might not have liked the criticism, but they would publicly take the high road.

The NHL tends to be a reactive league; they react to controversies with memos to officials, and sometimes with prospective rule changes that are less than fully considered for potential unintended consequences. You can be sure that officials (both on-ice and off-ice) are going to get reminders about being as precise as possible with clock management; which is OK, because that reminder is in order here.

Do we need a full-scale change of the clock management system? Personally, I don't think we do. However, I suspect that if there's even one more after-the-buzzer goal controversy this season, this situation could easily go from a memo situation to a Board of Governors priority item during the next offseason. That's especially true if the controversy were to arise in a playoff game.

6. There's nothing new under the sun.

Clock management discrepancies have existed in hockey -- at all levels -- throughout the history of our sport. The time management in some buildings are more reliable than others.


Peter Cooney in Springfield wanted more time between periods for concession sales. So did Eddie Shore. I used to stand at center ice, and look at Mr. Cooney, Point to my wrist like a watch and gesture to him asking if I could now start the period. It became a part of every game. We all knew it but the guy owned a minor league and needed to survive.

Dating back to the late 1960s or early 1970s, there’s an old story about a minor league hockey team owner who was having an affair with a woman much younger than his wife. Every Friday or Saturday night, he would meet up with his mistress at the same time and the same place on the other side of town.

One particular weekend, the team had a home game that was running unusually long.

The ice was patchy and the officiating crew repeatedly had to do some handiwork during stoppages of play. There were a lot of goals in the game, and multiple fights. At one point early in the game, not one but two panes of glass on the end boards shattered.

The owner was starting to get nervous. He always stayed until the end of the game but the hour was getting late and he was in danger of missing his, um, appointment. He went down to the scorer’s table and told the time-keeper to shave off as much time as possible from the game clock. Now, it was hardly a rare thing in some buildings in that era for time to “mysteriously” be added or disappear from the clock based on the score of the game, always to the advantage of the home team. In this case, though, two things made it unusual:

1) The home team was losing by one goal in the third period, and the owner was demanding that time be taken off the clock, and

2) The owner was a real miser (which made him pretty much the same as lots and lots of minor league and even NHL owners of the time!) and actually pulled two dollars out of his wallet to entice the time keeper.

“Run the clock,” the owner said. “Every stoppage just run it off two more seconds.”

“But your team is losing,” said the confused timekeeper.

“OK, here's $5,” the owner said. “Now run the clock and keep your mouth shut.”

I have no idea if the owner got to stay abreast of the final score or hurried off to play stick-and-puck games of his own that night. At any rate, hockey officials are no strangers to dealing with all sorts of issues related to the game and penalty clock.

Over the years, I have pretty much seen it all: Clocks running past whistles or not starting after the drop of the puck Penalty time inexplicably added or deleted. A 5-on-3 power play goal scored against the home team where, suddenly, what should have been 90 seconds of remaining 5-on-4 time is timed to wash out the second penalty due to the first penalty being incorrectly “expired” when the goal is scored. I’ve seen clock malfunctions countless times.

You name it, I’ve seen it. Maybe I should do a magazine ad for Rolex or, as Paulie said to Rocky in Rocky III, “All you’ve ever given me is this lousy, stinkin’ Ex-Lax watch!”

At the professional levels, there are regular crews who work the league that oversee operations the penalty and game clocks. These folks are invaluable to us on-ice officials, and you get to know how different people in different buildings work, because you interact with them so often over the years. Very often, they spot and alert the officials to things that the officials and even the coaches miss because we are focused on the game action.

However, hockey is a human game and mistakes do happen. Over the years, from my earliest days of watching my grandfather and father officiate clock-based sport, I observed how they handled such situations. My officiating mentors in the minor leagues and NHL were also very astute in picking up on and correcting irregularities with the clock. It’s an underrated but important skill for an official to learn and one that requires good communication skills both with on-ice teammates and off-ice officials.

As a matter of fact, in the years since I retired as an active NHL referee and moved upstairs in evaluating, supervising and coaching officials, assessing the clock and its management — particularly in buildings that are known for having clock issues — has become a second-nature facet of what I do. It’s not the biggest or most important piece, obviously, but it’s part of the bigger puzzle of mental alertness, communications and assertiveness for an on-ice official to stay on top of the game.

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A 2018 inductee into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, Paul Stewart holds the distinction of being the first U.S.-born citizen to make it to the NHL as both a player and referee. On March 15, 2003, he became the first American-born referee to officiate in 1,000 NHL games.

Visit Paul's official websites, YaWannaGo.com and Officiating by Stewart.