NHL On Ice Officials; The Time Has Come To Be Accountable

I, am a Maple Leafs fan. Always have been, always will be. I used to do a blog on the Leafs but found it became more of a chore than anything else, so now, well here I am.

I have a beef with the NHL Officials, I know they are human, but they seem to make more and more mistakes, and from a fan view point it simply doesn't appear as though they are held accountable.

One of the topics that seemed to be of regular discussion was officiating. Or more importantly, the lack of it on a consistent basis.

I of course being a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, am some what biased while watching Leafs games and regularly notice non-calls and bad calls. Though, as some one who shares my opinion with the masses, I have tried to be more open minded, and less biased to the point where I have found myself actually defending the on ice officials from time to time.

We all remember the famous non-call as Leafs fans from 1993. When Frasier missed a high stick that cut Doug Gilmour, and consequently allowed Gretzkty to score less than a minute later.

We all hold on to that memory, now almost 17 years later, like it was yesterday. When hounded about the Leafs inability to win the Stanley Cup for more than 4o years, we often say, " well, if it wasn't for that ( insert profanity here ) Frasier, we would have won in '93 " .

Maybe, but the Habs were pretty hot that year.

Now, having said that, I did say I had a 'beef'. I would like to know, who disciplines the NHL officials, who holds them accountable for their mistakes.

Way back in the good ol' Carry Frasier days. There was one Referee, and two Linesmen. The Linesmen incidentally, also had the ability to call a high sticking penalty back then. It seemed as though there were actually fewer missed calls.

There were fewer penalties for certain. By which I mean fewer types of penalties, and penalties were pretty much cut and dry. If your stick went above your shoulder, it was a high stick. If your elbow hit some one, anywhere, it was elbowing.

If you got you ass kicked, you probably deserved it, there was no ' instigator ' penalty.

Probably the toughest one for me is the whole,' I meant to , or intended to blow the whistle before the puck went in '. If the whistle, doesn't sound, the play should still be live, end of discussion.

Every game I watch, I see dozens of infractions that if the game was called by the book , would make games at least twice as long as they are. I understand that Refferee's simply aren't going to see everything, even if there are two of them.

I also think that they should give the power to call High Sticks, back to the Linesmen. The trouble with that particular notion, again is accountability. If the Ref's think that the Linesmen are supposed to be patrolling for high sticks, they ( the ref's ) won't.

It doesn't much matter to me, what they do to fix the issue's, but it would be nice for them to acknowledge that there are some. I want to hear, in the news, that when Carry Frasier, misse's what should have been a four minute major, he is held accountable.

Whether it cost's him his next scheduled start, without pay, or perhaps a scheduled playoff appearance, I want to know that it happened. Because right now, millions of hockey fans from all over the world, think that the NHL officials are nothing more than a bunch of arrogant Zebra striped Pylons.

I also think thank the Coaches and GM's should be allowed to " go off " on the officiating ( within reason ) once in awhile.

The NHL' s stance on Officiating is so " dictatorial ", it's quite frankly an embarrassment.

I do know, that the NHL Officials do in fact have a kind of ' mechanism ' in place. An Officials ' score card ' system if you will. It does not however seem to be much of an impact, as in my opinion, the quality and especially the consistency of the product has not showed any type of improvement.

That's all I really want, some kind of consistency. All the officials, calling all the games the same way, is that really too much to ask?