In tonight's exhibition between St Francis Xavier and Merrimack, won by Merrimack 7-2 (box/story posted to INFO-HOCKEY-L and on the Merrimack and USCHO sites), we saw a great example of how the new officiating system (one referee, two asst referees) promises to be an improvement over the old one (two referees, one linesman). Late in the game, with Merrimack's Darrel Scoville and StFX's Trevor MacLean tangled up behind the play, referee Jeff Bunyon whistled play dead to call penalties and separate the players. At the same time, MC's John Jakopin skated past the StFX bench and was given a vicious two-handed slash by Frank Manson, who was not on the ice at the time. Warrior Eric Weichselbaumer followed up with a slash in retaliation. Bunyon didn't see the infractions, but assistant referee Jim Villandry did, and he immediately signaled majors against Manson and Weichselbaumer. This is one of the functions of the assistant referee as described in the new Rule 5-4. Under the old Rule 5-4, Villandry, who previously was a linesman, would not have been able to even report the infractions unless requested by one of the referees. The officials were quite busy tonight, calling a total of 42 penalties for 93 minutes against the two teams. --- --- Mike Machnik [log in to unmask] *HMM* 11/13/93 ***** Color Voice of Merrimack Hockey WCAP 980 AM ***** ***** Unofficial Merrimack Hockey home page located at: ***** ***** http://www.tiac.net/users/machnik/MChockey/MChockey.html ***** >>> U.S. College Hockey Online http://www.uscollegehockey.com/ <<< HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.