As a followup to Mark's very fine discussion of professionalism by
sports broadcasters:

- I really like the Wisconsin radio team (Brian Posick - play-by-play,
  usually former Badger Captain Rob Andringa with commentary). They
  certainly report from a Wisconsin perspective, but both give an honest
  evaluation of the good and bad play by both teams. Rob has a lot of
  insight into hockey, and tries to explain some of the little things
  that he sees that make a difference. Rob does get a little excited at
  some of the plays. TV coverage is a different matter -- but no worse
  than what I've seen of the Minnesota TV announcers.

  I did catch some of the regional coverage this year, and while not
  strongly impressed with the announcers, I wasn't offended either,
  which is an improvement over what we had in the past. The
  between-periods blather I ignored.

> So much for the soapbox.
> 
> Someone else mentioned the referees being absolutely awful at one of the
> regionals.  I heard a lot about that the east regionals also.  While I'm
> sure there are good and bad referees in each league, one of the biggest
> problems (and this isn't a new problem) is that each league has its own
> style and bias for training referees.  

>                                      When you get into the NCAA's and you
> draw a ref from a different league, you have no idea what to do. 

The biggest problem with that is the players have so little time to
adjust -- less than one game -- and that can be tough.

>                                                        It's just too bad
> that the NCAA can't get the leagues together and determine what style will
> be used around the country and enforce the rules no matter where they go.
> But we're not likely to get any agreement on that.  We can't even agree on
> radio announcers.

I haven't seen any non-WCHA games this year, but I do think this problem
is smaller than it used to be. I know that the WCHA and Hockey East have
been doing a ref-exchange for a few seasons, and that helps a little
bit. Also the rules committee and head refs seem to be trying harder to
improve the consistancy.

Even within the leagues, there is variation between different refs, and
from game to game with the same refs -- sometimes the way the teams are
playing the game dictates a tighter or looser rein from the refs. Of
course, in the league teams pretty much know the refs from prior years,
and have more games to get used to things...

In the regional games I saw on TV this year, I did not notice a huge
disparity in officiating, but I didn't see most of the Eastern games.

On a side note:

Since there were WCHA teams in both the Green Bay and Grand Forks
regionals, the WCHA refs went East: John Campion in Worcester and Derek
Shepherd in Albany. Both worked the regional finals by the way (but Pi
couldn't work the East regional final since Michigan State was in it,
righ? ). 

Hmmmm... any WCHA folks surprised? I don't think the WCHA has any
outstanding refs right now. I would not have picked Campion and Shepherd
as the best either...

   --david