When I was a young referee just starting out my officiating career, I got a great piece of advice from Hockey Hall of Fame referee Frank Udvari.
He told me, "Stewy, remember yourself as a player, and how you felt during a game. If an opponent does something to you that you would get ticked off at, then that is a penalty. Forget all the other things about trying to read the play because you will end up over-officiating. Just feel the play.”
Frank, who was the AHL's chief of refereeing for many years and had also been supervisor of NHL officials, knew what he was talking about from decades of experience. As an active referee, he only missed two games (on a weekend where both his father and wife had taken seriously ill) in an NHL career that spanned from the early 1950s to mid 1960s.
Frank got a lot of the league's toughest assignments, getting assigned to Original Six era rivalry games that stood a good chance beforehand of getting pretty wild. That's how it came to pass that he was the referee of the game that ultimately led to the Richard Riot in Montreal. Incidentally, the riot was not triggered by anything Udvari did.
Richard got high-sticked by Boston's Hal Laycoe and Udvari called a delayed penalty. In retaliation, rather than fighting, Richard swung his stick into Laycoe's face and shoulders and then punched linesman Cliff Thompson twice in the face as Thompson tried to pull his away from Laycoe. It was the second time that season that Richard had physically attacked an official. The riots broke out a few days later after the NHL suspended Richard for the rest of the 1954-55 season.
At any rate, Udvari's advice to me was something that I never forgot during my career: I used the baseline of how I would have reacted to a situation as a player. Now, anyone who ever watched me play or referee, knows that I was pretty energetic and exuberant on the ice. I am someone who believes the game should be emotional and players should be spontaneous.
So where as a referee did I draw the line between a player showing exuberance and showboating? I applied the Udvari rule and looked at the time on the clock, the score of the game and the significance of the game.
Here are two recent examples of exuberance-versus-showboating situations that would NOT have bothered me as a player or referee:
First of all, I had no problem last season with Nail Yakupov's spontaneous "Theo Fleury slide" on his knees in a game between Edmonton and Los Angeles.
Folks, this was a time, place, score situation. Yakupov had just tied the game with about five seconds left on the third-period clock. On top of that, his team had just had a would-be tying goal (correctly) disallowed. So of course he's going to be joyful! Had I been a player on the Kings, I'd have been far more upset that we'd just given up the tying goal so late in the game, and probably would not have even paid much attention to the goal scorer's celebration.
Likewise, the Tomas Hertl between-the-legs goal against the Rangers for his fourth goal of the game would not have bothered me. Here you had a kid on top of the world, living out his dream of playing in the NHL and basically having that kid-in-a-candy-store feeling. That feeling of the game being easy and moving almost in slow motion for you rarely comes around but a few times in a carer for even for the game's true stars.
Hey, if you don't like Hertl making a flashy move, stop the puck. Knock him on the seat of his pants a few times and see if you can throw him off his game. If you can't catch him and he still scores, well, good for him.
Another quick tangent here: I will be doing an upcoming blog about things that get said in the locker room and on the ice. I do not believe that Joe Thornton's quip about the response to Hertl's fourth goal ever should have been printed. But I'll save that for later.
Now here's an example of something that DID bother me when I refereed. Kerry Clark, the brother of Wendel Clark, was a hard-nosed career minor league player who racked up a lot of penalty minutes and not a lot of goals. I could relate to that. However, something I did not like was the pre-planned goal celebration that he did whenever he scored a goal, regardless of the situation.
I was working an AHL goal one time where Kerry scored a completely meaningless goal in a meaningless game. He proceeded to moonwalk all the way across the ice in celebration. Standing on the ice watching him, my face got red and I balled up my fist.
As a player, if he had done that against my team, I would have made a beeline for Clark with my stick and gloves dropped; it would have made zero difference to me that it was during a stoppage in play. I'd have been tossed from the game, quite possibly suspended, and would not have regretted it for a moment.
As a referee, all I could do was watch him do it. Then I gave him a misconduct.
That was the "Udvari Rule" in action in a discretionary situation for a ref. Every official's threshold is different but I do think, as a former pro player, I had a pretty good feel for the difference between spontaneous emotion and deliberate showboating.
************
Recent Blogs by Paul Stewart
Jump in the Fire: My NHL Reffing Debut
Tales from the End of the Bench
McLeod, Lapierre and Why I Hate the Instigator Rule
Make the Right Call: My Journey from Enforcer to Referee
************
Paul Stewart holds the distinction of being the first U.S.-born person to make it to the NHL as both a player and referee. On March 15, 2003, he became the only American-born referee to officiate in 1,000 NHL games.
Today, Stewart is a judicial 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 • 
Join the Discussion:
»