College Hockey: On ice officials have to be better

Match penalty (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some college hockey officials incorrectly assume that if a college hockey player is a heavy hitter and dishes out “legal” heavy hits, he is somehow a dirty player and worthy of a major penalty even when it was a legal hit.

Hence, said player is incorrectly called for a major penalty.

It’s almost like the onus is on the player instead of the referee. I don’t understand this flawed line of thinking.

If anything the on ice officials need to do a better job calling the game of hockey.

Hockey like football is a physical sport – this is not up for debate – physicality is part of the game. This is a fact, there’s going to be injuries as a result of legal checks.

If I am not mistaken, one NHL player hurt himself eating a stack of pancakes last season.

If you could develop a light set of pads that was 100% able to prevent injuries you could make millions of dollars. There is no such thing.

Unfortunately, with college hockey, they’re forced to use part time officials; the product on the ice is suffering because of this. In the WCHA, the officiating has gotten worse the last couple of years and the league has shown no interest in improving the quality of their on ice officials. In my opinion, transparency is at an all-time low.

Often times, the wrong call is being made on the ice, under the guise of not wanting to be that ref that made a wrong call, when it comes to hard and often legal hits. This problem would be easy to fix, with the aid of video review.  s/t Bruce Ciskie 

If the referee on the ice is calling a major penalty, why not allow that referee to step into scorer’s table to allow him to take a quick look to confirm that he’s not making an incorrect call.

In NCAA hockey, penalties can be increased but never decreased. That rules is one that never seemed to make much sense to me.  If anything that rule is incoherent and the NCAA Ice Hockey Rules Committee should take a look at changing it, next time they meet.  Even the NHL can rescind a match penalty.

The game of hockey like football is fast and sometimes the officials get the calls on the ice wrong, the refs are human and will make mistakes. Some refs in some leagues seems to make more mistakes than others.

Lately, legal shoulder-to-shoulder hits have been called hits to the head resulting in major penalties and a game misconduct to the player dishing legal checks. This is unacceptable in my opinion and could be easily fixed if the ref was allowed to step into the scorer table to review the hit.

The on ice officials already review numerous legit goals to confirm that they were legal. One must ask, can they really slow down the game anymore?

I mean think about it, it’s not like they couldn’t review the few major penalties that college hockey has already. So why not review a questionable hit before the ref incorrectly throws a player out of a game for legal hit? Does that not seem fair? Wouldn’t that be better than taking legal hits out of the game of hockey? Why not change the refs behavior instead of expecting a player to change the way he plays the game of hockey.

UND senior defenseman Andrew MacWilliam is 6’2” 230 pounds and he plays a physical game and he is UND’s best penalty killer and he plays against all of the opposition’s best players.  MacWilliam is a hard checker, but not a dirty player and he has been incorrectly thrown out of two games this season for legal hits, one against BU’s Ahti Oksanen and one against MTU for hitting David Johnstone last Friday Night.

Both hits were legal shoulder-to-shoulder hits and shouldn’t have resulted in a penalty at all. In both instances, the same referee Marco Hunt made the wrong call and MacWilliam was given a five minute Major and a game misconduct, next time MacWilliam is given a game misconduct, he will also have to sit out a game due to a suspension for three game misconducts.

Last season, MacWIlliam was also given a five minute major and a game misconduct in game against theDenver Pioneers freshman forward Matt Tabrum as well, for this hit.

Do you see a pattern here? The officials need to learn the difference between a legal hit and an illegal hit. Hockey is a physical game and the players and the fans deserve better. The level of officiating does not match the level of play on the ice and it hasn’t for some time now.

Cross-posted at the Hockey Writers Combine.