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One of the most frequently asked questions that I get is whether I ever found it difficult to make the transition from being a pro player to being a referee. The answer is yes.
There is a lot to learn about the art of officiating. It is as much art as science. The mental and psychological aspects of the job have to be learned along with critical aspects such as positioning and rulebook knowledge.
When I was a young official only a few years removed from my playing days, I sometimes had trouble making the mental leap on the ice. Sometimes I'd skate by a player who messed up on a play, I'd tell him the way I saw it. If I thought he was playing soft or gutless hockey, I'd say so.
I would also sometimes engage in trash-talking conversations that were out of line with how an official should act when someone takes an adversarial tone. For instance, one time I worked a game in Regina where coach Bob Strumm got in my face about a couple of plays where his team didn't get a power play.
"Get back behind the bench and coach," I said. "Your power play sucks, anyway."
We laugh about that now. At the time, it really set Bob off. In retrospect, I can't blame him. A referee should not taunt or goad someone in the way that an opposing player might.
At other times, I struggled with the rulebook -- but not in the way that you might think. John McCauley got me to learn the book thoroughly by having ME write up a rulebook test that passed muster with him. Knowledge of the rules and their permutations was not the issue. Rather, my struggle was with rules that I thought were ill-conceived ones (such as the automatic delay of game penalty for even a clearly accidental flip of the puck over the glass by a goaltender) or were vague and poorly written.
There were times when I was a young official when I flat out refused to enforce something I thought was an ill-conceived rule. I had no right to do that, and I stopped doing it as I matured. Like it or hate it, automatic penalties have to be called.
At other times, I realized that I needed work on striking the right balance between maintaining game flow and enforcing the rulebook. Over time, I think striking that balance became one of my biggest strengths as a referee.
The best advice I ever got about officiating methodology and striking the balance between a player's mentality and a referee's mentality was given to me by Hockey Hall of Fame inductee Frank Udvari.
Frank pulled me aside one night and told me, "Don't just read the rule book and then referee by the book. Put your skates on and referee by the feel. If a player did it to you and you'd be angry, that's a penalty. If he did it to your teammate and you want to go fight the guy, that's a penalty. If you were sitting on the bench and your teammate was doing it to an opponent and you would ask yourself, 'What the hell was that?', then that's a penalty."
For the rest of my career, I focused on refereeing by feel and by the temperature of the game. Hockey sense became an area where I felt my playing background, which included time in the NHL and WHA, gave me an advantage over some other guys.
In past blogs, I have said that I think young players and coaches would benefit themselves by doing some officiating themselves. They would learn to think the game differently as well as gaining a first-hand understanding of just how tough officiating really is. At the same time, I think the ranks of officials would benefit from having more people who played the game.
The truth of the matter is that we have a hard time recruiting people to become officials and then to get enough of those who do try it to stick with it. Apart from the technical aspects and rulebook knowledge, this job demands a combination of athleticism, psychology and mental toughness that few people possess.
Enjoy tonight's playoff games. While you do, keep in mind that many of the things we all love about playoff hockey at its best -- the shift-in and shift-out intensity, the drama and the way that every single aspect is subject to scrutiny -- have to be balanced with the rulebook and the demands of supervisors and the league.
The truth of the matter is that there are constant decisions to be made. There are things that happen on virtually every shift that could be called a penalty if the rulebook was interpreted in the narrowest and strictest possible way. The officials have to make split second decisions all night long in a very fast-paced game where things happen even faster at ice level than they appear to happen in the stands.
Let the flow be with you.
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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 • 
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