Be sure to 'like' Hockeybuzz on Facebook!

Follow Paul on Twitter: @paulstewart22

Now that the whole Brandon Prust vs. Brad Watson thing is over and done with --- the player publicly apologized and got a $5,000 slap on the wrist from Colin Campbell and Watson no doubt caught hell from his bosses -- I want to address an ancillary issue that some in the media raised.

Why can't officials publicly speak for themselves? Basically, this was a policy the NHL instituted years ago ostensibly to shield officials from public criticism but also out of a misguided belief that officials should be basically interchangeable and anonymous. On the flip side, the League started to issue fines for players and coaches who criticized the officials in postgame comments.

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.

That stuff about "a good official is one that no one ever notices" is 100 percent garbage spewed by people who never officiated a damn thing in their life and probably never played a game at a significant level, either. There are going to be tough calls that make one side or the other unhappy. There are ALWAYS split-second decisions to make on what is and isn't a penalty or whether it's incidental contact around the net in a goal/ no goal situation.

In short, there's tremendous pressure on the official to perform, just as there is pressure on the athletes competing. Pressure brings about attention, like it or not.

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. Actually, it really ticks me off to this very day. 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.

Plain and simple, you can take the officials' names of their sweaters. You can reduce the size of their sweater numbers to postage stamp size. You can ban 'em from speaking to the media. But you cannot -- no matter how you try -- take individual styles, personalities, rule interpretation and judgment out of officiating. It's a human game and officials are every bit as human as everyone else.

I never minded talking to the media after a game. Way back when, there was a pool reporter sent to talk to us who shared our quotes with everyone else. Contrary to what any of my critics said about me, I never talked for publicity's sake or self-promotion. I did it because I felt strongly that people deserved an explanation about a call in a game. If I got it wrong and I was aware, I admitted it. I stood behind my work. Whether the public agreed with it or not, I at least put the explanation out there.

Even when there was not a pool reporter, the savvier beat writers all knew which establishments we hung out at after games. I was always willing to talk if someone wanted me.

In more recent years, the NHL has tried to make its officials voiceless as well as nameless and faceless. As the years progressed, I used to catch flak for talking to the press. I'll be blunt about it, because I'm a straightforward guy: I didn't care. I went to Groton and graduated Penn. I was trained to think and act on my feet, and to speak intelligently. I could handle media questioning better than any of the dunces I worked for after John McCauley died.

One other point I want to raise, and this is directed at the nimrods who say "officials have no accountability" without having the slightest clue of how officials actually get managed. Officials are answerable to their supervisor and assignors. Actually, the assignors are much more critical than any coach or player, but it doesn't get played out in public.

Officials work gets critiqued all the time (whether it's intelligently critiqued, properly coached and fairly reviewed depends on the league and who is in charge). But, yes, officials can get fined. They can get fired or get retired as their bosses see fit -- and, no, an NHL official simply being a union member does not automatically shield that person.

Ideally, these reviews would not be personal or political in nature. Unfortunately, in the NHL, they often are. The NHL hates any controversy involving an official, whether the call was the right one or not. It peeves me when I hear about blatantly invented rationales for sending good officials home while retaining lesser ones who are more politically/personally in favor with their bosses in Hockey Ops and the underlings they personally appoint.

I will speak here from personal experience. There were quite a few years where I finished near the top of the annual players' poll on the top referee in the NHL, such as this one where I placed second to only Kerry Fraser among a sampling of players from every team in the NHL. I finished ahead of some "bigger name" guys who regularly got chosen to work deep into the Stanley Cup
playoffs and were always trumpeted by the bosses as the best and most consistent in the game.

I chalk up my strong acceptability among the majority of players to my understanding of the game, my willingness to treat stars and non-stars alike, my own sense of accountability to the game, and the way I hustled and put it all on the line every night. Being an ex-player sharpened my hockey sense and understanding of flow. I thought like an official but I knew where the players and coaches were coming from.

As a player, I made it to the WHA and NHL because I stayed in tip-top condition and worked and worked on my skating. I played defense as well as wing at the pro level. So when my bosses laughably sent me home for cover reasons of my backward skating not being good enough (funny but Jacques Demers and Whitey Stapleton never had a problem with it) or for "not being in good enough physical condition" (the biggest joke of all in those days, because I was nearly obsessive about it in both my playing and active officiating days), I knew these were trumped up reasons to send me home early.

I was sent home early each spring because I was "too controversial" for some of my bosses' liking. But I had the respect of most of the players and coaches. The media guys respected me for being a standup guy who would answer to a call.

How are these bad things? They're not. But it taught me some valuable lessons about how things work in the real world of hockey. I now try to impart what I've learned to my readers here. I call 'em like I see 'em, because I know no other way. It's the ol' ref in me.

*********

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. Stewart also maintains 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.

In addition to his blogs for HockeyBuzz every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, Stewart writes a column every Wednesday for the Huffington Post.