Mike Serba Memorial Golf Tournament

Systemic Problems With Minor Hockey Part 2

If The Best Keep Leaving The System, Then What Are You Left With?

Referees

I have to say first; I want to be clear that I’m not talking about refereeing at the most primary level of hockey. Those kids that are 4 & 5 years old at the house league level. The young people refereeing these games are almost always young teenage hockey players from the organization that get some very basic training and get paid a few measly dollars to earn some extra spending money. The 4 & 5-year-old players are just struggling to keep the shiny sharp part of their skates in contact with the ice and the refereeing consists of just shuffling up and down the ice punctuated with the odd face-off. These young referees are at the same stage in the proficiency as the young house league players and yet I’ve seen angry parents tee-off in anger at these poor kids. Please; for heaven’s sake, lighten up and leave these young kids alone.

Now To The Real Paid Referees

When I started coaching years ago no-one was being paid (other than the “de facto” league owners). The only exception were the referees.

What bothered me at that time was that these guys were the only true professionals and many of them were making a lot of extra money. These guys could work 4 or 5 games a night and the pay for referees & linesmen was not at all bad and most of it was cash money that was probably not declared for tax purposes. What further bothered me was that I thought the state of proficiency in refereeing was damn poor. It was extremely frustrating to be a part of a game in which a number of bad calls had an impact on the outcome of the game.

There was a group of supervising officials from the GTHL that would attend games and supposedly review the performance of the on-ice officials, but I found out this was a considerable joke. It was pretty much a “good old boys” club and real criticism and corrective action was probably rare. I’ve seen the supervising officials visit the referees room between periods of a game. Most of the time they just joked; however, I’ve actually witnessed a supervising official give direction on how to call a game in between periods of a play-off game. It’s my opinion that this is absolutely wrong and unconscionable.

Abuse Of Officials

Back in the day and even now, the on-ice officials are subject to a lot of abuse from the fans and coaches. I was pretty good at it in my days. I had a voice that carried and knew just what to say that I could get away with, and wasn’t at all afraid to voice my opinion so that everyone could hear.

There Were Actually A Few Good Ones

While I had a dim view of the competency of many of the on-ice officials, there were a few good ones. As I reflect now it seems to me that becoming a top official is probably as difficult as becoming a top coach or a star hockey player. I don’t know exactly how the 2 or 3 good refs got as good as they were; I just know that these 2 or 3 stuck out from the rest. Firstly they had a very high level of competency in the call of the game but more than that they had way of calming down tense situations. They would handle a player or coach that was upset with a call by listening and explaining. Too many of the other refs would just get pissed and hand out more penalties as a show of power and just make situations worse. As a result the 2 or 3 good refs garnered a lot of respect.

And Then One Day

One day I picked up the major newspaper for my City of Toronto. Right away I saw an article about a recent incident involving a GTHl referee that had occurred a couple of days previously. The referee had assessed a major penalty in the last 10 minutes of a regular season game. A major penalty in the last 10 minutes of a game carried an automatic ejection from that game and a suspension for the following game.

At the end of the game the ejected player and his father parent threatened the referee that they would find out where he lived and get even.

The referee in the game was one of those recognized as being one of the best in the league. I don’t remember his first name but his last name was Marra. After this threat Marra made the decision to quit refereeing.

If The Best Keep Leaving The System, Then What Are You Left With?

There’s a lot more to come. Next I’ll deal with: can hockey skills be taught?

Note:

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