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Back in the mid-1990s, the National Hockey League made a decision to take officials' names off the back of their sweaters. In more recent years, even the numbers on the sweaters have shrunk in size. Little things like the NHL never publicizing that a certain official is working a milestone game such as his 1,00th or 1,500th are also part of today's reality.
I understand why these things were done. I strongly disagree with it. But I understand it.
Ostensibly, the reason for why it was done was that there were a lot of young referees breaking into the NHL, and commissioner Gary Bettman hoped that by removing the names off the back, it would reduce the chance for criticism. The veteran guys like myself, Kerry Fraser, Don Koharski and Bill McCreary were able to deal with that aspect of the job but there was a fear that many of the young officials would be overwhelmed.
There were other things at work, too, in all likelihood. In 1993, not long before the Players' Association locked horns with Mr. Bettman -- who is very good at the job he was hired to do, and is someone who already treated me kindly on a personal level, but is as hard-nosed of a negotiator as you will find anywhere -- the NHL Officials Association had a contentious go-round with the League that some readers may recall.
I have no doubt that part of the NHL's original motivation in making its officials nameless stemmed in part from the League wanting more of an upper-hand in the future negotiations. Mr. Bettman is someone who definitely thinks in long-range terms.
At the time the decision came down to remove the names, a frequently raised point from those in favor of doing so was that no other sport in North America had its officials wearing their names on their uniforms. My rebuttal to that was that hockey isn't like any other sport.
In hockey, there was always a certain intimacy between the flow of play and the officials overseeing it while also enforcing the rulebook. We are in constant motion with more individual and collective decisions.
In baseball, only the home plate umpire has frequent decisions to make over the course of the game. However, there is a significant time lapse between each decision as the pitcher and catcher agree on the next pitch and the pitch is delivered. The umpires on each base have lesser volumes of calls to make. In any given game, the third base umpire may not have a single safe/out to make and just one or two fair/foul calls on a ball hit down the line.
In football, the officiating crews are much larger in number than in hockey -- with each of the officials watching a certain area of the field of play -- and also lengthy delays between calls.
Basketball has its refereeing teams in motion quite a bit but there is a somewhat lesser array of calls to make and the foot-traffic game does not move quite as fast as the skate-propelled game on ice.
I say this with a huge amount of respect for officials in all sports. We all have difficult, thankless and often lonely jobs out there. My own family has been involved in officiating multiple sports. For example, apart from his NHL refereeing and Stanley Cup-winning coaching success that made him a member of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, my granddad, Bill Stewart Sr., was a highly decorated National League umpire in Major League Baseball for decades and worked a slew of All-Star Games and World Series during his career in that sport.
I mean no disrespect to my brethren in other sports. I just think that hockey is the toughest of all the sports to officiate.
In hockey especially, it is hard for an official to truly be inconspicuous out there nor should he be afraid of the attention that inevitably comes from making tough and controversial calls. A truly good official has to project fearlessness and not be afraid to be part of the game. Be aggressive and be yourself. Treat it like the Peace Corps motto and make it the toughest job you'll ever love.
Over the years, many of my critics -- including the supervisors who took over after John McCauley's death -- said that I "tried to be the show" when I officiated. I strongly object to that characterization. I was exuberant, aggressive and fearless but I cared only about the game and not getting my name or face on television or the newspapers.
In more recent years, the NHL has tried to make its officials voiceless as well as nameless and faceless. I used to catch flak for talking to newspaper reporters after games (or at post game hangout spots) and today's officials are not supposed to speak and be quoted. I never talked for publicity's sake, no matter what some people claimed.
I talked to the public because I believed then and now that when there is a tough call that was made, people deserve an explanation of the call. Whether they agree with it or not, I put the explanation out there.
Quick tangent here, which will be the main topic of a future blog: I hate "makeup calls" and I did not believe in them either as an active referee or in my later oversight roles. Hell, I didn't even like them when I was a player. My parents always taught me that two wrongs don't make a right. Making a second bad call to "atone" for a previous one is not good officiating.
Make a mistake? Own up to it, and say that it wasn't your best call. Then move forward and work even harder to get the next set of calls right. I always tried to live up to that ideal whenever I was on the ice. Maybe I didn't always succeed -- just as a player who turned over a puck might have another turnover a few shifts later -- but that was always the objective.
Something that very much worked to my benefit in the early part of my refereeing career was that I unfailingly felt that my supervisors and League bosses were invested in seeing me succeed. Sadly, too often since we lost John McCauley and others from the old school retired, officials get put in position to fail.
Aside from my personal differences with Colin Campbell, I have a host of professional differences of opinion in my view of how NHL officiating should operate. One of these many areas, which I have touched upon in previous blogs, is the way the current replay review system works.
According to Campbell, centralizing the reviews from one place and not giving the on-ice officials a say in the decision over whether to uphold or overturn a call from the ice, creates greater consistency. I don't see it.
What I see is situations like the "safety netting goal" in Detroit where a video review (from any locale) would have helped get the call right. What I see is situations like the Thomas Vanek overtime goal from this weekend where a correct on-ice call that it was a good goal -- mind you, with a referee in perfect position at the net to see it -- get overturned and replaced with an incorrect call from the War Room in Toronto that there was a distinct kicking motion.
Where does "distinct kick" and "directed" become "obscure" and "hardly guided"? Where is the "conclusive evidence" to overturn the call in the ice? Where was the intent on Vanek's part to direct the puck into the net with his skate?
Is the soup is too salty or is the soup just right? In other words, the Vanek review and others like it become personal taste items and not directives to get the call right. The teams are subjected to the tastes of some faceless TV watchers in Toronto who are not then held accountable. I wish I had job security and a nightly buffet like theirs!
Answer me this: When does the word consistency enter into the equation? The War Room went "hands-off" on the Detroit safety netting play and then improperly overturned the correct on-ice call on the Vanek play. These actions are so contradictory that it is delusional to say the current system fosters greater consistency.
On the Vanek play, the referee who has worked to get into position and has a good view isn't even asked what he saw! To me, it seems like the player did a spin and did not do a Charlie Brown field goal try which is what I think of when I think of a distinct kicking motion.
Ah, but the results are the same, with the War Room playing Lucy. The truly nameless and faceless pulled the winning goal away from the Islanders just as Lucy pulled the ball away from Charlie Brown. Splat! Both Charlie Brown and the NYI land flat on their backs.
As Charlie Brown would say, "oh, rats!"
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Recent Blogs by Paul Stewart
The Great One and Me
A Bostonian On the Ice in Davos
A Hole in the Replay Rules: The Safety Netting Goal
Dinosaurs, Giants and the Vancouver Pillow Fight
Rambunctious Fans and Rogue Zamboni Drivers
Penalty Shot Mania Runnin' Wild (or Not?)
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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.
Today, Stewart is an officiating and league discipline consultant for the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) and serves as director of hockey officiating for the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC).
The longtime referee heads Officiating by Stewart, a consulting, training and evaluation service for officials, while also maintaining a busy schedule as a public speaker, fund raiser and master-of-ceremonies for a host of private, corporate and public events. As a non-hockey venture, he is the owner of Lest We Forget.
Stewart is currently working with a co-author on an autobiography.
Blogger •Former NHL Referee • 
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