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I think you have the right as a coach to ask the question, but the referee doesn't have to respond. I have seen plenty of respectful and productive conversations result from a question, but I have seen plenty that are not. At the end of the day, blaming the calls or the officials is like blaming the YMCA rink for painting the goal lines too close to the end boards. I mean, yeah, it can affect the game, and the home team has a better idea of what will happen, but both teams are still playing by the same rules.

I think the only time it becomes a problem is when a poor official makes a bad call and realizes it. Instead of acknowledging that they made a mistake, just like coaches and players do all the time, they take the "I'm the authority here and I will call the game the way I'd like" approach. Just man up, say my bad, and everyone can move on. I see no reason for an official to have to explain every call. But when a very questionable call is made at least inform the coach on how you saw it. Or even better, when a player asks what he can do next time to avoid the call, actually give him the guidance he is looking for instead of giving him an additional 10

Yes, an official has the authority to tell a team that he is only going to talk to one of the designated captains or only the head coach. In my coaching days, I had a number of officials tell me and my other coaches that they would only be speaking with the head coach. This was their way to keep the amount of grief they heard from the benches to a minimum. To answer your first question, a ref has NO obligation to explain a call to a player. I've had coaches get on me because "I didn't explain the call to the player". My response back to him was "that is called coaching and that is what you are here to do, I'm just here to call the game". I will always clearly say what the call was, but I'm not going to have a 5 minute conversation rehashing the play and why I made the call. I'll also only discuss calls if the coach is doing it in a respectful way. If they are screaming at me or my partner, I just ignore them and tell them that we will have conversation when they can do it at a "normal volume".

Does a referee truly "owe" an explanation for a call? My gut says no. If you had to explain every single call, you would never finish a game. I feel like people who say that a call wasn't "explained" really just want to yell at the referee to either get the call overturned or intimidate the official into not making the next call. That's not to say that there aren't officials making terrible calls, but, let's be honest, there are plenty of players making terrible plays too and they don't have to hear about it from everyone else in the rink. I haven't looked at a rulebook in years, but when I did, I remember reading something along the lines of the referee only has to talk to the team captain who is marked with a "C" on the scoresheet. The official can talk to other people as courtesy, but the official only has to talk to the officially designated captain.

Lowering the amount officials are being paid would only make the ref shortage worse. I don't think you are going to find people to take time out of their day to do games, especially at the hours many of these games occur. For me to do a 7AM game, I need to be at the rink no later than 6:30 to get ready, and then we add in travel time, I'm probably getting up at 5:30 to do that 7AM game. The amount of money officials make is to give them an incentive to do the games. I would venture to say that by lowering what officials make, would lead to no coverage for games with start times before 9AM and as I stated before... If the officials don't show up, nobody gets to play.

Most refs are over paid already. The good refs earn their pay, but when thinking about the horrible ones it's almost aggravating how much they make. If they were to do that poorly at any other job they'd get fired or be stuck working for minimum wage. Last I checked the hourly rate for refs was well about that mark.

Crazy thing is, while this seems like it might just be a ridiculous bitter post. It's spot on.

It's the same move Alpha has pulled many times. Rebrand as vengeance or you can't get ice Use our officials or you can't get ice Buy our team supplies or you can't get ice None of these have any benefit to the kids. Only to Alphas pockets

ACHA and similar levels are a chance to continue playing at a meaningful and competitive level without expecting "what's next?" Leagues like these are for the players who stood out in high school, "AA" or "AAA" (if it's from one of the several sham "AAA" teams). It's not exclusive to those groups naturally and worth trying out depending on where you go to school. It's fun and satisfies our competitive nature. It's not bad to watch and gives collegiate kids something to do for a few years. Reading through these comments it's fascinating to some users overthink what it means to play ice hockey and what the end result should be. At the end of the day best case scenario is we're all watching on TV but for 99% of us it's just the memories and friends that matter most.