Yeah ... I fully expected a "commie punk" crack after that one. God help us all, but this league is run by idiots."Greenpeace puke"? What a bunch of assholes.
Not all good ol boy networks are filled with dinosaurs who literally don't give AF about the health of their employees and discriminate between groups (teams) based on their own loyalties. This one is. You could make a convincing argument that we should (figuratively) burn down the NHL league office and start over with actual human beings.Lots of places are run by a good ole boy network. Some are successful and some are not. Locally that's how SAS runs, I know because I worked there.
I firmly believe that good officiating wouldn't be as "pliable" as these clods want, thus it's not a goal the NHL even contemplates. They don't want good refs. They want refs that will call the games the way that jerkwad Colie Campbell wants them called."...the refereeing is atrocious" from the Ottawa head trainer. That in itself is the tip of an iceberg in terms of leaguewide acknowledgment of something nothing's being done about. It would be nice to get that talked about more.
Based on just the last 20 years, do you think the NHL actually cares about the quality of the officiating? Because ... if they do, they have a funny way of showing it.The NHL officiating has deteriorated to a point of cheapening the product and I'm not sure why any league would want that...but whatever.
That's the thing though ... how "successful" is the NHL in reality? Because the vast majority of the franchises are either unprofitable or barely breaking even. Yeah, franchise value continues to rise but the whole league is a cash vacuum with no real balance sheet game changers on the horizon now that you've probably maxed out expansion and managed to get your players to submit to a salary cap. Is there some sort of prestige to protect or something? Because this league is stuck in 4th place in North America and going nowhere fast under current management. Maybe that boat nobody wants to rock is a freaking bathtub.Rule 1 of any successful enterprise is don’t rock the boat.
people like to complain. Refs are good and easy to complain about.
who cares, from a corporate view, who wins or loses? How much is being brought in from advertising, tv, etc? How many butts are in seats?
I'm not sure that's actually true. I've got a couple of guys on partial plans sitting next to me at the PNC who told me they they had never watched hockey at all until late last season and they are both already mystified as to why NHL officiating is not only so bad, but more importantly why it's so inconsistent game to game. These guys have maybe watched 50 games in their lives and they instantly fell for the game, but this is really starting to bother one of them in particular. It doesn't take long and it doesn't take some sort of sporting savant to quickly recognize this as a significant problem. To think it's not impacting the growth of the league is dumb. Not calling you dumb ... Bettman and Co, not so much.Well you can and should try. But the issue with poor referees is not something that is apparent to new fans.
I said this before, who wants to be a ref? the pay is good but there is constant travel. Not to mention abuse from fans even if you are doing a good job. I guess if you don't want to have a wife or kids and like travel it's a pretty good job. And you do get summers off.
I'm not sure that's actually true. I've got a couple of guys on partial plans sitting next to me at the PNC who told me they they had never watched hockey at all until late last season and they are both already mystified as to why NHL officiating is not only so bad, but more importantly why it's so inconsistent game to game. These guys have maybe watched 50 games in their lives and they instantly fell for the game, but this is really starting to bother one of them in particular. It doesn't take long and it doesn't take some sort of sporting savant to quickly recognize this as a significant problem. To think it's not impacting the growth of the league is dumb. Not calling you dumb ... Bettman and Co, not so much.
I know fans of other sports bitch and moan about officiating, but the NFL and NBA in particular have absolutely nothing to complain about. They at least get a baseline of competence. MLB umpiring is more erratic, but honestly everything about pro baseball has been erratic for years and they're certainly not a model anybody wants to copy.