Follow Paul on Twitter: @paulstewart22
I cringed the other day when I heard Hockey Night in Canada's Ron MacLean make his comments questioning whether the NHL assigned francophone referee Francois St. Laurent to work Game Four of the Tampa Bay series in Montreal solely to send a message following the Francis Charron disallowed goal controversy in Game Three.
I immediately knew what would follow in the days to come. It was bound to instantly turn into something ugly that had nothing to do with hockey.
Ron made a mistake. He gets paid to talk, and he said what some people were (wrongly) thinking. Those who have beaten the drum the loudest are those with an agenda. On the one side of the fence, you have those who were actively looking for a fight so they go overboard with a PC rant about Canadian society. Then you have bigots on the other side who paint all francophones with the same brush.
I want no part of that discussion. I won't wave anyone's flag here and I'm not a political spokesman. Those who habitually play their agenda-driven version of the "French card" -- on either side -- tend to be insufferable, closed-minded people. I have no time for the ignorance of the rabble-rousers on either side.
What I am about to write comes from my heart as a longtime referee and supervisor. It is also comong from a born-and-bred Bostonian who played and lived in Quebec and currently works much of the time in Russia.
What I think MacLean was getting here was to say there would be a perception -- not that he believed it himself - that St. Laurent and Charron would have a pro-Habs slant, and the NHL would avoid criticism by assigning other officials. Had this been a statement about a Toronto native referee in a Toronto game or a Massachusetts native in a Bruins game, it would not have sparked the same political furor, but it would have been the same sort of statement in spirit.
Here's the thing: Ron was dead wrong, and he should know better. I think we need to educate every hockey fan, coach, player general manager and commentator worldwide to understand that Referees are ALWAYS neutral or they won't last in this game. Further, we need to think of officials as "Arbiters Without Borders."
Let's forget the French thing or someone's New England birthplace. Instead, let's go with "he's a good referee who might or might not have missed a call" depending on how one wishes to interpret the NHL's poorly-written rulebook. By the way, I helped train the referee in question when he first was breaking in. He works hard at it and is eager for self-improvement and that's all I could ask.
Ron MacClean, who is a certified referee and once worked an NHL preseason game, came to our NHL Training camp to go through all the stuff we do so he could talk intelligently about what referees do. I admired that and I wish more people involved in the game would do the same thing. They would get a whole different perspective on the job.
However, this is also the reason why I'm disappointed in Ron here. He should know full well that the ONLY team the officials care about supporting is the one in the stripes. They care about making the right calls; no more and no less.
Avoiding public criticism of officials should not be part of the equation. As I told Gary Bettman to his face when they took the name off my sweater, people will still know me and say what they want. Besides, when I signed the contract, I knew getting criticized was part of the job.
In a previous blog, I
told the story of how Pat Burns once accused me of sticking it to the Bruins to prove, as a Boston native, that I would not favor the Boston team. It was patently untrue.
In another blog, I talked about the
time I had a run-in with Claude Lemieux and coach Pierre Creamer accused me of being anti-francophone. Serge Savard and one of my dearest linesmen friends stepped up for me.
In yet another blog, I told the story of how even one of my linesmen was afraid of people citing the so-called
"Montreal factor" on a call I made that actually went against the Habs in their home building.
I'm not going to repeat those stories again -- read them for yourself -- but my point here is I know from a lot of personal experience what I'm talking about. It's embarrassingly uninformed to think this way about a ref's nationality or home town influencing his calls.
To put this in further context, let's apply the same "logic" to a player's professionalism and motivation. Columbus Blue Jackets forward R.J. Umberger is a Pittsburgh native. If he turns a puck over and the Penguins score a goal, was it because it he was secretly pulling for the Penguins to win their playoff series against his Columbus team?
That thought is laughable. Well, so is the idea that a referee or linesman who works his way up to the NHL has an allegiance toward -- or a "bias" against -- a team because of his hometown or home province. That is not how we are wired.
Incidentally, the same thing goes on at all levels of hockey. I sent Jean-Yves Roy to St. Lawrence this year to do two games with Maine at SLU games. There were people that raised eyebrows because J-Y went to Maine.
I said, "Yeah, and that was 20 years ago. He's reffing and that's the end of this conversation."
He did a fine job, by the way. I knew he would.
*********
Paul Stewart holds the distinction of being the first U.S.-born citizen to make it to the NHL as both a player and referee. On March 15, 2003, he became the first American-born referee to officiate in 1,000 NHL games.
Today, Stewart is an officiating and league discipline consultant for the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) and serves as director of hockey officiating for the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC).
The longtime referee heads Officiating by Stewart, a consulting, training and evaluation service for officials. Stewart also maintains a busy schedule as a public speaker, fund raiser and master-of-ceremonies for a host of private, corporate and public events. As a non-hockey venture, he is the owner of Lest We Forget.
Stewart is currently working with a co-author on an autobiography.
Blogger •Former NHL Referee • 
Join the Discussion:
»