I have a friend who is a Hockey East Referee

I absolutely agree with everything you wrote. I would also like to add that my biggest issue is that a referee can retroactively claim he had intention to blow the whistle. OTOH if a whistle is incorrectly blown and the play is not infringed by the whistle it cannot be taken back.

Wrestling official. So first, the disclaimer. It doesn't make it right at all. A bad call is a bad call. The defense of fellow referees is necessary because coaches have made it so. I've seen a new guy come in, think he can change this, make a mistake, admit it, and watched a coach have to be restrained from hurting him. The coaches care about their kids and get very personally offended for them, as they should. The "black and white wall of silence" became necessary when all of a sudden coaches were willing to assault the officials.

That said, I've looked a coach in the eye and told him "I trust the judgment of my fellow ref" and then walked over to my fellow ref and said with a smile beaming across my face and my head nodding up and down "that was the worst f-ing call I've ever seen in my life and I will be making a note of it for the league to review. Next time try reading the rule book before you make a fool out of me and yourself."

And we do feel bad when we blow a call and it affects the outcome. It's only ever happened to me a couple of times, but it happens to all of us. I'm ANGRY about last night. I was there. It was probably the most tangible soul dong punch I've had in the past 2 years from Michigan sports. I doubled over in pain. And I'm sure when they get home, the NCAA will be calling and telling them just what a mess they made of the game while telling the press they "trust their judgment".

In dealing with many officials I have found that the ones who earn my respect generally say something along the lines of "I see what you're saying, I saw something different/interpreted it differently. I respect what you're saying, but my call remains". The ones who refuse to entertain the notion that they might have erred and want to turn a conversation into a pissing match give the whole profession a worse name.

This has been a great change in MLB. Baseball umps used to behave the exact same way but now--always stick up for the call that was made, no matter how bad it is; now if there's a questionable call, the umps get together, talk about it and figure out who saw what to do their best to make the right call. More often than not, I think it's probably the same ump who made the bad call and realizes he messed up, but you never know because it's a joint decision of all the umps.

It has resulted in a fair number of reversed calls, mostly going from wrong to right, and I don't think it has diluted the opinion of the umps, probably just the opposite.

If your friend works 50 hours a week and refs part time as a hobby, then you get what you pay for. If your friend’s attitude is that it happens, then that’s just insane. It was a terrible call, made by a guy who either 1) does the job as a hobby or 2) isn’t very intelligent and decides that “If I can’t see it, I’ll just assume…”

Maybe for the tournament, the NCAA should use the professionals and not some part timer.

I'm betting your friend had to work pretty hard to get to that level as well.

Getting on refs for messing up a "puck in view" call is like ragging on a hitter for only reaching base safely three times out of ten.

This is just an impossible call. If you have ever been in front of the net when the puck gets there, you know the chaos. During this chaos, the ref must dodge through any players behind the net (on skates, remember) without interfering with them, and stick his head in close enough to see what's going on in the middle of the melee.

This isn't a strike zone. It isn't something you can really call with consistency. You can't wait 3 seconds after losing sight of the puck or anything. Sometimes you get lucky and you have a clear view of the puck loose under the goalie's side, and so long as you see it, and the puck isn't frozen there (or the hacking is becoming a safety issue), you can keep the play going. Afterall, it's the goalie's job to get possession, not just hide it from view.

If you watch Red Wings hockey, you are probably intimately familiar with some epically bad calls associated with "don't see the puck" calls.

Combined with the NHL's nefarious "intent to blow" rule,* you essentially have a rule that can arbitrarily disallow almost any score.

Fans have always been hard on referees when calls don't go the way the fans want them to. If you think we're harder on officiating today, you should have seen how turn-of-the-century baseball fans treated umpires ("...the umpire said 'Strike Two!' Fraud, cried the maddened thousands, and the echo answered Fraud!," a line from Casey at the Bat, 1888). Television, Web-video, HDTVs and DVRs, however, make us better judges. They also raise expectations.

The problem with video review is it takes time. Time slows the game, and interrupts its flow. Under that paradigm, a quick and arbitrary call is perhaps more valuable to the game than a long but right call.

But in this case, we are talking about a potentially game-ending goal. If review isn't available, and the ref knows he lost sight of the puck too fast, he should keep the play moving at least for a second.

It's got to be the hardest thing to call in sports. It's not like Pass Interference or Holding, where it's so common that you can set a precedent, and screwups are considered part of the game. It's nigh impossible to get right every time. And since scoring is so rare in a hockey game, you are effectively weighing the game's fair outcome versus the safety of a prone player in a melee, every time you call it. Without a good few minutes of video review, it's almost impossible to get this completely right. Without video review, it's left to sticking to arbitrary whistles. It sucks. But if you can't review this and take the referee out of the equation, it's going to remain as much a part of hockey as bad ice, craggy boards, broken sticks, and any other ancillary malfunction that determines an outcome and isn't related to the actual play of the respective teams.

* This means that play stops at the moment that the ref thought about blowing his whistle, though since it is only ever involved in really bad calls, you could be forgiven if you thought this means the ref is simply announcing his attempt to blow a call.

Awesome... I think we all need to follow suit. Except for maybe canceling any accounts... that's not what I would consider a bad habit.

Well, my father-in-law always says "the best cat is a dead cat". If it means Michigan will start winning again, I may have to change my mind about that statement.

Stranger things have happened. God did kill a bunch of people just to test Job's faith. Don't rule out the possibility.

i'm actually kind of impressed. that's no slouch of a show and to be called as an expert on it means he's doing well for himself (as a wallpaper guy...how he's doing as a ref is another story)