3 Blind Mice, on 04 February 2012 - 03:25 PM, said:
I understand some of you are frustrated with the officials in this league, but let me ask you a few questions.
1. How many of you can acutally skate?
2. How many of you can skate well enough to keep up with the pace of the USHL?
3. How many of you could keep up for more than 2 minutes?
4. How many could keep up, not get tired, stay out of the way, and put yourself in the best position to to get EVERY call correct? Okay, that might be asking too much. I'll change it to would you be able to get ONE call correct.
5. Speaking of correct calls, how many of you have ever even looked at the rulebook for this league? Without looking it up can anyone tell me, after a penalty is assessed, what are the exceptions to preventing the assuming face-off from being in the offending team's defensive zone?
Didn't think so....
I'm not sure if you all realize that sighlines while skating on the ice and being involved in the action are a lot different than sitting in your cozy seat in the stands. I know it's easy to critisize the officials from your viewpoint, but how many of you have ever attempted to officiate a hockey game at all. Try a mite game, muchless a USHL game. At your jobs are you perfect 100% of the time? Do you want someone standing over your shoulder booing and yelling at you when someone every thinks you are wrong, even when you are not?
Believe it or not, the officials DO NOT care who wins the game. At the end of the night do you think the winner has any effect on the offcials personal feelings?
Hydro, I know you might want a penalty for droping the gloves, but you ever think that your player may have told the team USA player that he wanted to fight, then proceeded to skate away? In my honest opinion it's pretty gutless to incite a player into fighting then leave him at the alter and expect the be on the powerplay. Do you really believe that dropping you gloves when someone asks you to fight and then he skates away is worth your team being shorthanded for 2 minutes? Fighting is an honorable and couragous thing to enage in and when someone says they want to fight and then skates away when it's time to do it is pretty gutless. Again, my personal opinion.
Okay that's the end of my rant of playing devils advocate. For anyone who is wondering I played hockey at the NCAA Divison 3 level and officiate locally for fun and some extra cash.
Anxiously awaiting a repsonse.
While I understand what you're saying and don't entirely disagree with the degree of difficulty that the referree's have in their job, you also need to admit that there are some bad officials out there. Whether or not the three cited in this thread are the "bad" ones they are out there. I'm not trying to indicate that they are truly biased toward one team or another, but by being sub-par at their job they end up tilting the game in favor of one team or another.
I don't have any expectations that every ref get every call on the money, and yes I do have a better view of the game from my seat than they do on the ice. However, when the infraction occurs directly in front of the referree, and I can see him watch it happen, then turn and skate away down the ice then I call that bad officiating. I've seen it happen, and it's frustrating. I've also seen guys get away with stuff on a lucky chance because the ref happened to be distracted by another event on the ice. That's normal, ignorance is not.
So in answer to your list of questions, no I don't think I could do the job. There are a lot of fine gentlemen who get a bad name in general because of a few bad referrees.
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