Last Saturday’s Gladiators game had an abnormal start to it. For 95% of the games, I work the home penalty box. One guy who also works most of the games is one the goal judges behind the net that the Gladiators shoot at twice. He has always been reliable in terms of showing up. Anyway, right before the puck is dropped, the referee always looks at each goal judge and they flip on the red light so he knows it’s working. As he looks to the home goal judge, we notice no one is there! The guy who is scheduled to work hadn’t called to say he couldn’t make it and since he’s been so dependable, it was assumed he was there.
Obviously, the game cannot start unless we have 2 goal judges, so our supervisor, who is in the section next to me working the scoreboard, tells me to get over there ASAP and they’d cover my position in the penalty box. I rush out of the box, skipping steps to get to the top of the concourse and then proceed to run almost halfway around the arena to get to the section where the goal judge sits. As I’m hustling down the stairs, the applause gets louder as I get closer. I’m sure most of the crowd didn’t see me run from the penalty box to get over here so I can only assume its sarcastic applause as if I were the person scheduled to work here and simply am late and am holding up the game. I’ll add that I got from the penalty box to the goal judge area in pretty damn good time.
I did work half the first period there until they got a replacement so I could get back to the box. There was one amusing chant from a fan. A guy yelled “Spread some Christmas Cheer. Punch him in the ear!” as the players got into a scrum after the whistle was blown. One thing about being a goal judge at the Gladiators games is that, unlike NHL arenas, you’re not surrounded in a glass enclosure. You’re exposed to the crowd and when there are belligerent drunks or loud-mouthed idiots in your general direction, you get to hear the “best” of their drunken/ignorant wisdom firsthand. One of the few games I worked as goal judge I had to listen to this idiotic woman state at least 30 times during the game how the team needed to “get more sogs”. She was referring to the display on the scoreboard which shows the team’s Shots On Goal, abbreviated as SOG. She, of course, read the acronym as a real word.
Getting back to the game, the referee who worked that night is neither a fan nor a player favorite. The games he’s worked this year he’s wound up pissing off both teams immensely with his calls. Anyway, after a series of questionable calls, he calls one on Blue Bennefield, the team’s goon. Keep in mind Blue was on the Gladiators roster in their first season and he and I spent a lot of time together in the box. He steps into the box, fuming from the call, and does a sideways slap/push on my right shoulder and says “What the FUCK was THAT call about?” Anyone looking into the box not knowing that we talk to each other would have thought he was also pissed at me and wanted to start a fight.
The ref was really hearing it from both teams and you could see it was starting to wear on him a little bit. Obviously you have to have a thick skin as a referee. For those of you not well-versed in hockey, when a penalty is called the referee skates up to center ice where the penalty timekeeper is (to the left of me in the penalty box) and makes the signal for what penalty he’s calling. In the NHL the past 2 years, they’ve also equipped the refs with a microphone so the penalty is audible to the crowd and to the television audience. Obviously in the minor leagues the refs aren’t outfitted with this but for one penalty later in the game he skated up to the booth, pretended to turn on his mic, and then said what the penalty was and followed it by pretending to turn off his non-existent mic. He had officially skated into Loony Land and never came back.
Speaking of referees, last Saturday’s Hockey Night In Canada on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) game was in Toronto and they were honoring a referee’s 1000th game (Paul Devorski). His family was on the carpeted part of the ice and when the ceremony ended, they proceeded to walk back. Somehow, his mother put her foot on the ice and not the carpet and fell on the ice pretty hard. You could hear the “ooooohhhhh” of the crowd. Thankfully she was OK but I give CBC credit for immediately switching camera shots so as not to show his mother on the ice as others helped her up.