GrumpyOldPucker

Great thought to do something to showcase the girls, Any one know if the St-Louis showcase is gonna happen and if Mid-Am will be fielding a team? The numbers for autonomous HS teams just are not there and probably never will be. The Mid-Am girls numbers are difficult enough if you are just trying for proper age appropriate amateur teams...... I looked at it a couple years ago and it would be hard to come up with 6 - 8 co-ops that could field 12-13 player rosters at all the girls ages so yeah I think you are on the money Wes. IRRC Mid-Am has one of the smallest girls registration levels nation wide.

So If this does get off the ground, do we think that they will try to ban the girls from playing on the boys teams? I have mixed feelings on it. I really respect the girls that can hang with the boys teams, but I've seen way too many girls get targeted during HS games. Not because they were scoring threats, just because they were a girl ..... there's a lot of stuff you hear when you are in the play or cruising past the bench that you have no idea of in the stands.

Whoops, double post. Please delete

Wes. Hmmm, I thought it looked like he was hurt. I personally don't totally agree with the "zero tolerance" on profanity... I mean, it you aren't MF-ing me, my partner, or another player - and not yelling so everyone hears it - then maybe sometimes you should let it slide. I mean I've skated midget, JR's and College games where I literally just told the player to shut up, get his head out of his ass and get back into the game. The higher the skill level, the more accepted it is to do that (or it used to be), but if you do it then they really gotta earn a deuce or dime for running their mouth. But this day and age you cannot use judgement or common sense, everything has to be absolute black and white zero tolerance. Some things are black and white, some things are looked at that way but maybe should not be.... The player definitely deserved penalties for his outburst once he was in the box, but maybe the better course would have been to ignore his comment on the ice (let him blow off steam, he's hurting and needs to lash out and someone), or just ask him to watch his mouth and take him over go get his finger looked at. Let him vent a little at the striped shirt on the way and try to defuse the time bomb. I've been out of it for a couple years but there used to be grass roots mentoring.... It kinda depended on the rink, the local scheduler, and what the local senior officials were like. Most of the guys I worked with would go out of their way to help a fellow official improve. As for the USAH process, it was never "penal" and was never designed to be that way. They would review the game with the official - all of it, the good and bad. They would usually pick one or two areas to emphasize and ask the official to improve on. I have seen supervisors and evaluators rip someone a new asshole... as things got more and more politically correct, well that happend less often (just like it became abusive for a coach to raise your voice and reprimand a player in practice). Anyway, It is up to the official to self review and work to improve - always was and always will be. I seem to want to say something about horsesd and water..... Some officials seek out and soak up any advice given and others just want to know when the checks would be mailed. I will say that there is one hell of lot more feedback available to officials now than when I first started..... I'm not gonna air dirty laundry as far as sanctioning officials. Over the years there were occasions that officials got sanctioned but it was never something that was published to the general public. If your performance soiled the sheets too often, or you got a bad rep, the word got around. Schedulers just would not assign games to the guys that were habitually a problem and they either straightened up or quit. The system was to an extent self correcting way back when. Unfortunately, IMHO you have the an attitude problem across the board with the kids and the young adults in general these days. It's not a hockey issue, it's a society issue. For someone actually wanting to learn and become a good official, It's all on the job training.... It used to be that your performance earned you better games. Now, I suspect that having a pulse does the same. Now a days, folks have a different attitude towards the sport (what can it give me rather than what can I give back) with a healthy disdain for those that laid the foundations ... that's as far as I'll go with it.... Yeah, they didn't do so great, but this game could be a good learning experience for these two... Hope someone talked to them or they at lease watched the video and self critiqued.

If I had to pick a point where I thought the game turned south on these two refs it would be on the second head contact penalty in the second period. Big kid hit small kid. Law of tonnage wins in a collision, but from the cameral angle I saw, I question head contact. That seemed to be the point where the Huskies became more focused on the Ref calls than playing the game. I want to know more about what the huskie kid that got the gate at the end of the first said. His actions in the box deserved getting tossed, but what did he say on the ice to get put in there? IMHO, That one is the one that lit the fuse.... Like I said, not absolving anyone, just breaking it down with an unbiased eye.

I was never a fan of the change of the rules to make all the aggressive fouls 2+10. Over the years USAH took a lot of the tools to manage the game out of the officials hands and replaced them with a sledge hammer. I can remember when you could use double minors and stand alone majors to manage and control the game (problem was too few officials had the balls to call the doubles and the majors). Think about it, what's more of a deterrent 1) do a guy dirty, get a double or stand alone major, maybe give up 2 or 3 goals during the PP and then have to keep playing and maybe face retribution later in the game, or 2) do a guy dirty get a 2+10 or major and a game sit out most of or all of the game and not have to worry about any retribution until the next time you play them (if at all). The penalty minute totals are inflated because of mandatory 2+10, you can take 30 minutes off that 42 for the additional misconducts forced by rule. Can't help a player that runs his mouth at a ref and get a dime, that's on him for not having self control - and I don't buy it that they should be excused because they were frustrated with the lopsided calls. Life ain't fair get over it! You do that in the real world there are consequenses..... at least their used to be... That's a discussion for a different time. And, you cannot tell me you've never had to just shut up and overcome someone's incompetency to succeed? As for the FPP... noble notion, but it sets up the officials to fail. You call 2+10 and then you hear noise from the bench because of FPP so some officials downplay the call to roughing or something that doesn't carry the added 10 and hear it from the other bench. OR, you get an official that calls it legit to the rules and its a non stop shitstorm from the benches "the call was good but that damn 10 kills the FPP. Can't you just make it a minor"? (and that is with a competent official because the coaches are more concerned with that damn FPP than they are teaching their players how to adapt their game to the way it's getting called). So, let's leave the FPP and penalty minute totals out of this.... We agree that it's stupid and has probably hurt more than helped. Like I said, I watched the whole game, and I DO NOT DISAGREE that there were were missed calls that would have definitely kept the lid on this one. They had the opportunity to set the tone not even a minute in if they called the Preds knee on knee hit in the neutral zone. Then it moves on to making the next call, and the next after that. I'm not gonna discuss the merits of each call or non-call. Suffice to say that IMHO there were missed calls, there are a couple calls that I disagree with, and a couple others that I need to know what was said to earn the unsportsmanlike penalty. I was not on the ice, and I had the benefit of watching from above on video... It's a whole lot easier to see it from the stands, the bench, or the eye in the sky than is is from the middle of play. Do the officials need more seasoning... to that question I say you NEVER stop learning. You should be able to take something from every game you skate that will make you better. Every time I presided over a gong show it bugged me until I sat down and mentally reviewed the game for what I missed or could have handled differently. I've come across too many of the arrogant new breed of officials that don't take responsibility for their role in how the game plays out. Another reason I hung them up.... but I digress Should the huskies be upset at the calls or lack of calls? Definitely... Just like the Preds are happy they got away with the ones they got away with. It's human nature, but you can only control what you can control. You control your own emotions. You control how you execute on the ice. You cannot control what is called or not called, and I guarantee that the more you bitch and yell the worse you make it for yourself and your team. No way I'm excusing the officials, but the thing is, the Huskies were never really out of this game. The players and coaches focused on the calls\lack of calls instead of taking care of business. I seem to remember the Pens opted to win a cup instead of chasing down Adam Graves for breaking Mario's hand with a tomahawk slash. And I also remember them losing a lot of games vs the Flyers cuz they lost their shit instead of playing the game. If I could make one change across USA hockey, I would mandate that all teams that are not Tier 1 or Tier 2 national bound, or HS varsity would play NON-CHECKING. Still teach the checking and body contact, but take the hits out of the rec\house level games and much of this discussion might go away..... No FPP, in that world, if a player gets called for an aggressive foul then the deserver to sit for 12 minutes and think about what they did to get called. On that note, the attitude when a call is made needs to change from "bullshit, I didn't do that", to "what was it I did to make it look like I did that"? It's called adjusting your game to the way the current game is being called because the ref is probably not gonna adjust to how you wanna play. I could be on my soapbox on this stuff for hours..... Some will agree with me and some will disagree. In the end it's still just me talking about my opinions as a player, coach, and ref shaded by my training and experiences. What you get from it is up to you.

Having been there done that too many times over the years, I gotta say "maybe" and "it depends"..... How's that for a committed answer. I went back and watched the whole game and I zoomed in a lot on the contact that started the altercation. I have my doubts, but I would still call a penalty for boarding. I can also see someone not calling it. The Huskie player bent over and tried to duck as the Pred player lined him up. He got tangled with the Pred player who rode him in. I couldn't decide after multiple replays if I thought he just rode him in, or pushed\guided him too. On the Ice you get one look at it so my location on the ice would affect how I saw the play. That said, the huskie players own action (ducking) put him in a position to go into the boards the way he did. If he remains heads up with the Pred player then we are not having this conversation. If the Pred player throws a hip check we are not having this conversation. The Huskie player also got up and immediately started throwing hands at the Pred player. Obviously it's easier to see it all from above, especially on video where you can rewind and zoom. As for what I think I would have been able to see to call if I were on the ice ... I will say that when you are elbows deep breaking up those piles you are mainly concerned with safety (yours and the players). Your main goal is to separate the combatants (while not stepping or falling on anyone and not getting punched or stepped on yourself). You have to have a plan and pretty cool head to separate them AND get the numbers of all of the combatants. From my experience, I would likely have the initial call(s) (maybe) boarding, the retaliation of player that got hit for roughing\retaliation and the two players coming in with the high sticks. Once the scrum got rolling. At minimum I would have fighting majors on the two players in my immediate grasp. As I saw a lot of haymakers flying, I want the ones that are aggressively throwing the punches to get the fighting penalties. I would do my best to get the numbers of any other players aggressively throwing punches. The players thrashing around\wrestling\etc on the ice would likely get unsportsmanlike or maybe roughing penalties so they don't get a pass on taking part in the stupidity. The two that got into it to the left away from the pile definitely threw punches, but they could easily go un-noticed since both officials were trying to untangle that pile. On my second review I saw that an official did see and ultimately separate them. If it was me they get the fighting penalty..... Really thought provoking question. Until you've been up to your ass in alligators you just don't know what it's like and it really is hard to describe the experience. Did I mention that you might just have a bit of tunnel vision - especially if it's your first rodeo. The feeling can be sheer panic or surreal slow motion... Oh and after watching the whole game I see why this turned into the powder keg it did. This is rec league hockey for crying out loud. I hope that the officials and the coaches go back and review their performances and behavior in this with a unbiased eye.... just maybe they will learn something to take forward. Here's a couple hints: Hey REF - you are only as good as your next call. Make it a good one, eventually people will remember and respect you for all those previous good calls. But never forget that you can still blow it all with your next call. Hey Coach - the players feed off of your energy be it positive or negative... You have more control than you think you do. Hey Everybody - Above all, be humble because it's not about you its about respecting the game!

This is an example of why I retired. I witnessed this (the officiating, the players lack of respect for each other, the belligerent coaches, and in general the parents) way too many times over the years across six districts and a couple Canadian provinces. If I'm calling it here is what I would have: First of all, there would have been a bench minor and then maybe someone tossed from the Huskies bench log before the altercation. You simply do not get to act that way from the bench in a game I'm skating. You respect me and I respect you... you don't and you get to leave and call me bad names in the lobby. As for the altercation itself I would have: Preds - boarding 2+10, three players get fighting 5+G, every player in the pile gets an unsportsmanlike minor Huskies - two players get high stick\head contact 2+10, three players get fighting 5+G, every player in the pile gets an unsportsmanlike minor One of the two Huskies players that started the mess with the high sticks was fighting would get assessed second GM for 5 penalties. the other I cannot tell exactly where he is in the pile. End result is both teams down a full line for the rest of the game, everyone yells at me and calls me rude names, says my calls were wrong or too tough (on their team). Finally, nobody makes their own players\coaches take responsibility for their actions. Thus another reason that I hung up the stripes. Nomex undies in place - flame away!