Paul Stewart: No Excuse for Lack of Hustle by Officials

I know a certain assignor out that way that wouldn't be all too happy with those two officials...

Men's league hockey is worse around here than youth hockey.
How can an official make a close accurate offsides or goal call when they are 10 feet or more from the line? We lost a game in OT because the ref was 30 feet behind the play and just guessed as to whether or not the puck crossed the line.

I realize we aren't earning a paycheck to play but we are paying the officials to be competent or at the very least try hard. Since our league won't really do anything about it, this never will change. They won't even reprimand officials who don't know the league rules.

IMHO, all leagues should make the scorers rate the referees with some detailed information. It doesn't need to be a -10 type thing but something along the lines of a needs improvement, satisfactory, or very good scale would be fine with mandatory listing of at least three specific examples in the game to support the rating along with the identification of any other trend type things.

Interestingly enough, when I played and coached hockey, the on ice officials were always great. They were great skaters and often explained when there was a whistle so that there was no problem. They took it upon themselves to educate the players and coaches as to how they were calling the game so as the game moved along there was no friction....

when I coached basketball...that was another matter. I coached Jr High, and we would get the fat old men...I mean make me look like I'm in shape....they would figure it out so no one moved more than half court. If there was a play along the out of bounds on the side they didn't cover...good luck. And they were just plain bad. Never mind not running the floor, they were bad officials. But every now and again you got a younger official or an older one...who took it seriously. They ran the floor. They explained to the players why they called what they called. They jogged to the scorer's table for each fowl call (they way they are supposed too). Those officials (and there were a couple in Baseball and Soccer too) made the bad ones look even worse.

Paul I agree..
Been a while since I have done USA hockey in that particular rink of which you speak however I can tell you I have seen it from the sidelines myself while waiting on my own game to start. I would be willing to bet part of it is the 4 or 5 games a day these guys take. The assigner also need to take some responsibility here. they have a small group of guys and don't want to expand their circle of Refs. If the assigners actually posted the games on say horizonRef or a site similar you would be able to weed our the lack of hustle.

The irony is I am sitting on my ass this summer waiting assignments.

You need to keep in mind the situation surrounding the game. Yes, I'll be constantly referring to how things work here, which may be radically different from how things work there, but anyways:

- In summer hockey (ie, non-sanctioned) here in Calgary, it's actually fairly common for referees to use a 3 puck system. Yes, you wind up with a warm puck now and then. And yes, we absolutely do want to cut down on as much skating as possible, because...

- We're often doing 5+ games in a row on a single day, because there's a total lack of referees during the summer. Last weekend, I did 6 Friday games, 4 Saturday games, and 3 Sunday games. The weekend before, I did 5 Friday, 1 Saturday (because I was busy in the morning/afternoon), and 4 Sunday. One of the other guys I was working in the same arena complex with had 3 days of 7 straight games over those two weekends. Every single one of those games was 2 hours long with a flood once every second period.

I am going to not be hustling all the way up and down the ice when I'm in my 5th game/10th hour of 6 games/12 hours in a row with functionally no break, sorry. And if you "pay me and fire me on the spot," there will be nobody to referee for the rest of the day.

At least here in Alberta, during the summer, there IS NO sanctioning body. Anything happening right now has nothing to do with Hockey Canada. Nothing to do with Hockey Alberta. It's a bunch of for-profit groups putting together random hockey tournaments just because there's a buck to be made from over-zealous parents who think their baby is going straight to The Show and coaches who think they're all that - I take infinitely more abuse from parents/coaches in summer hockey than in winter hockey. Also, there's no guarantee that the referees are not two random guys that they pulled off the street corner.

Winter hockey (ie, sanctioned) is entirely different, yes. We're restricted to 1 A program (ie, AA/AAA stuff) game per day. Yes, for that stuff you better be hustling at all times, and there's no excuse not to be. But in the winter there actually is a sanctioning body, a way to deal with lazy officials (ie, you won't be doing the hockey anymore). But in the summer, you take what you get, because you're lucky that there's referees on the ice at all.

- In summer hockey (ie, non-sanctioned) here in Calgary, it's actually fairly common for referees to use a 3 puck system. Yes, you wind up with a warm puck now and then. And yes, we absolutely do want to cut down on as much skating as possible, because...


- freedomgundam

Freedom- Sounds like summer hockey in Calgary is very similar to how it is here in Minny. Assignors have hundreds of games to fill. Ideally they want guys qualified to do whatever level they're assigned, but honestly that is not the primary goal. Filling the game seems to be all that matters to the assignors & the leagues & tournaments. If the caliber of officiating is not up to snuff, so be it. Those with a stake in the game have gotten paid.

It's an interesting quandary for officials. There is no way, I don't care how good you may be- that an official working his 4th or 5th game in a day is as mentally alert as he was during his first or second game. This doesn't even speak to the physical toll and/or the conditioning level of the officials. So are officials doing a good thing by taking 5,6,7+ games in a day- thereby allowing these tournaments to actually be played? Or are we really doing a disservice to the game by facilitating these shoddily run tournaments with subpar officials to keep popping up, with more and more games to cover by fewer officials? Are we, the officials, "feeding the beast"? Doing 5, 6, 7, or however many games guys are doing in a day does a huge disservice to the game from the first second their performance starts to slide. Assignors that have officials cover 5+ games a day (probably a lot less for most officials) are exposing themselves as desperate, greedy, or in many cases both.