Lol Jesus Christ. Calls are overturned 69% of the time. That’s with benefit of video review on only reviewable calls. Imagine how much shit the refs get wrong every single game that never goes to review.
Best refs in the world my ass. I’m tired of that narrative. If this is the best we got, it’s not good enough.
The one thing I'll say about NHL refs is, they really aren't paying enough to get the quality of refs you'd expect. Salary range is only 165k to 250k, and honestly, given the difficulty of the job, the pressure, the hundreds of nut bars personally invested in your every whim, there is no way I'd do it for that price.
Hell just think about how after every playoff game how many people get jumped in every city in the league for just wearing the other teams colors. Now imagine you have to be the guy making the decision on if a goal counts, if something's a penalty, etc and what some of those nutbars (look at that Vegas fans in Dallas this year for example, or that crazy Kings Lady and Cecily last year) who nearly killed a guy for looking the other team but not actually being involved would do if they caught you after you "screwed their team."
Honestly, 165k doesn't go very far now a days. And then you consider that these guys are traveling for 200 days of the year, worse than players.
No wonder all of the refs are primadonnas that want to be the star. Why the f*** else would you do the job? Develop the niche skills to skate at the NHL level? Put your normal life and plans at jeopardy? Hard to maintain a relationship let alone say raise kids when you're gone more days than you're there. They aren't doing it for the money, it's barely above normal white / blue collar work. You can pull more than that easily without the strict skillset in the oil patch if you put in the work, or almost any degree with similar levels of success compared to being an NHL level ref.
And no wonder the league can't create accountability among its refs. Can't otherwise they'd just not have any friggen refs. Lol. They should be paying these guys 5x as much, it really would fix everything almost instantly. Makes it so you could retire after a couple of years, makes it worth it. Also makes it something you can aspire to and something worth taking on the accountability of day a post game press conference. And the entire cost would only be like 20 million per year total - Same as the cap moving up 312k if you consider that there's say 20 NHL refs & 40 NHL linesmen, and then 32 teams with each player splitting things to be 64.
I'm sure every team in the league would pay 300k to fix the reffing NBA style. It's peanuts in terms of the league's overall budget. It's just a matter of the league having the will to fix it.
earlier on the bench
