I think someone hit upon the issue and the solution early in this thread.
The comment was made about western referees in an eastern style game (and
the opposite is true as well).

The western and eastern game have the same rulebook but you would never know
it by watching the games.
What is elbowing and boarding in the east is just good defense in the west.
What is hooking and slashing in the west is poking and tapping in the east.

It shows up all year long, even within the same league.  When you have a
hard hitting, physical team (like Cornell) against a wide open speed team
(like Quinnipiac),  The games are penalty laden. And, depending on the
referee, you can't even tell who will be getting called and who won't.  It
seems like a ridiculous situation when both teams have to play tentatively
for the first 10 minutes of each game, just because they need to find out
what the referee finds objectionable and what is ok.

Go into inter-league play and it gets even worse because each league has its
own style and the visiting team has to abandon their style of play to match
the style of the referee.  Some of those games are decided by the style
enforced by the ref rather than the skills of the teams.

Get into tournament play where both teams are going against unknown refs and
it has to be a nightmare.

The solution is simple (on paper) and has been written on the list  every
year since I've been a member.

1. There must be a single governing body for all referees which lays down
the guidelines as to how games should be called.  As long as the style is
dictated by each individual league, there will never be uniformity.
(Whether or not the individual leagues can come to a consensus is a
different story altogether and will be left as an exercise for the reader).
2.There must be standards within each league that dictate what does and what
does not constitute a penalty.  If we can't get uniformity within a league,
it is hopeless to expect one nationwide.
3.There must be continuity from start to end of season. For the past 2
years, the first  8-10 games of the season have been awful to watch with all
the obstruction hooking and interference calls going on.  Then, all of a
sudden it stops.  It's not (as the NCAA would like to believe)  because the
teams finally "get it" and stop their obstructions, it's because the
referees just stop calling these penalties.
4. Referees must call the same game from the opening faceoff right through
until the end of overtime. It's horrendous to see some of the crap that goes
on at the end of the third period when the players know that the refs have
"put the whistle away".  Maybe the refs  don't want their call to "affect
the outcome of the game".  Bad officiating leads to undeserved goals (or the
lack of deserved goals).  And the last time I looked,  a goal in the opening
minute counted just as much as one in the last seconds of the third.

We can complain about referees til the cows come home but how do you rate a
referee?  Every one of us has an idea of how the game should be called.
It's our own personal bias and most eastern fans are critical of western
refs and vice versa.  I think we can all agree that things would be much
better with consistency across leagues, within leagues and from start to
finish of each game.  Consistently doing what will be the big issue if a
solution is to be found.

I suspect that the leagues do not want to get involved in the touchy issue
of giving up their own autonomy and that nothing will be done.  And we will
be back here again next year having this same old discussion again.