Bri writes:
 
>Luiz stated that Pierre Belanger was no longer allowed to work Brown
>games. Everyone's favorite ref hasn't done any Clarkson games since,
>I believe, the infamous (at least here in Potsdam) Cornell at Clarkson
>game of 1990-91. Has he been banned from any other schools?
 
Pierre apparently didn't work any Cornell games either, at home or on the
road.  In fact, a quick look through the archives seems to indicate that The
Mustache of Doom didn't do *any* games from December to about mid-February.
At least, no one seems to have noticed him, and it's nearly impossible to
miss him when he does a game.  There's a story there somewhere...
 
I wonder about this "banned" business, though.  It makes no sense to me that
the ECAC would keep a ref around, no matter how respected he is (and believe
it or not, Belanger *is* a respected ref in some circles), if they have to
put restrictions on the arenas he can work in.  And conversely, it doesn't
make sense for the ECAC to essentially play favorites by keeping a ref away
from a team's home arena if that team has had "problems" with him.  If this
is the way the officiating is run, it won't be long before we'll see either
of two things:  1) lots of "subpar" refs banned from lots of arenas, leading
to an incredibly staggered schedule allowing the few "good" refs left to
cover as many games as possible; or 2) refs becoming "homers" in order to
please the home coaches so that they can keep their jobs (and while the
prospect of officials biasing calls in favor of the home team would please
the home fans no end, it would be a terrible way to run hockey games).
 
Besides (warning, near-sacrilegious comment coming up), if I could ban a ref
from Cornell games, I'm not sure that Belanger would be the one I'd pick.
IMHO, when Belanger sticks to reffing a game, he's not all bad and can actu-
ally be quite good (and yes, I have indeed seen reasonably well-officiated
games by Pierre).  It's his grandstanding and getting into it with players
(especially French-Canadians) and sometimes fans that I could do without.
But even with the grandstanding, I can think of five ECAC refs off the top
of my head that I would replace with Belanger in a heartbeat:
 
     Peter Dawes
     Either of the Murphys
     Alex Dell
     John Gallagher (an amazing decline -- he was one of the better refs in
          the ECAC as recently as two years ago)
 
And given time, I might be able to come up with some more.  Like most dis-
cussions of officiating, this is all a matter of opinion, and I'm not saying
I would shed tears if the ECAC dumped Belanger.  However, if the ECAC dumped
Belanger and allowed someone as grossly incompetent as, say, Dawes to stick
around, I would have to wonder very seriously about how the league was
selecting their officials.  (Given the performances of the lesser lights
mentioned above, perhaps we should be wondering already)
--
Disclaimer -- Unless otherwise noted, all opinions expressed above are
              strictly those of:
 
Bill Fenwick
Cornell '86 and '94 (.5)
LET'S GO RED!!
"My brother's got this 65-mile-an-hour bass fishing boat.  Now, I don't think
 bass can go 65 miles an hour...  Maybe he catches them and takes them skiing
 or something."
-- Blake Clark