STATE OF THE WCHA (By HeidiSioux)

Goon's world would like to welcome Guest Writer HeidiSioux.

I am becoming more concerned with the state of the WCHA with each passing weekend. Virg Foss (love him or hate him) from the Grand Forks Herald has had what I thought were two interesting articles in the last month. The first one was the following:
UPON FURTHER REVIEW, WCHA MUST GET REPLAY FIGURED OUT
Published on January 20, 2008, Grand Forks Herald (ND)
which basically says the league needs to get their act together (unfortunately it is an archived article and costs $2.95 to read it – however if you go to the front page, type in Virg Foss in the search it will allow you to read the first few paragraphs) and the one that was printed on Sunday, (Virg Foss Article), and again tells the WCHA to get their act together and adds additional items that the league should address.

Let’s start with the officiating situation. It is atrocious!!! The following is a list of refs off the top of my head who I think should have restrictions on the teams that they can ref (if they should be allowed to ref in the WCHA at all).

Randy Schmidt – He has been suspended for this year, but if he is reinstated next year he should never again be allowed to ref a Denver, St. Cloud or Wisconsin game as his perceived bias toward Denver (or maybe it is just his basic incompetence) has tainted any call that he might make in a game concerning these teams.
Todd Anderson should not be allowed to ref a Duluth game (grabbing a player by the jersey) or possibly Alaska-Anchorage game (some say controversial disallowed goal vs UND)

Don Adam - should not be allowed to ref a UND game EVER. This goes all the way back to the Mike Commodore days when he had an absolute hatred for the kid, continued through the “I just make this shit up as I go along”, to the horrendous non-call on Paukovich when he broke Robbie Bina’s neck and finally topping it off with the brutally bad game he called on Sat night in the Sioux vs the Gophers game, where, by allowing “junk” to continually happen and build up, it almost resulted in a melee during handshakes.

Jon Campion -should not be allowed to ref a Minnesota game. His stats continually give conspiracy theorists an amazing amount of ammo to say that he is on the Gopher payroll.

With just these 4, the league is severely limited as to who can ref which game and it would become an incredible juggling act. I am sure there are other people that could add additional refs to the list.

After the officiating (which I could go on about for days), my next gripe is about Bruce McLeod and Greg Shepherd personally. They have in my opinion, gotten to the point where they care more about maintaining the status quo and just coasting along, not paying attention to what is happening in this league, rather than in moving the league forward and improving it. Their actions sometime seem to indicate that they don’t have any integrity personally and appear not to care about the integrity of what I and many others feel is the best college hockey league in the country When the Randy Schmidt debacles (yes that is plural) were going down they were nowhere to be found. There wasn’t a single reporter or interested party that could get a hold of either one of them. Seems strange to me in this era of instant communication via cell phone and internet. Their response when they finally did respond was “OOOPS, SORRRRRY”. Completely unacceptable. They were however “available” and more than willing to make comments and issue statements when a coach has behaved inappropriately. I get very frustrated and have a hard time with this double standard.

There is absolutely no accountability for anyone (McLeod, Sheppard and the refs), and because of that, the situation has gotten to the point where there is such a lack of respect for any official or any call that’s made that the first reaction by pretty much all fan bases to any call that is unpopular is “the official is out to get us”. I realize that in the scheme of things, whining about hockey individuals is pretty minute, but they are paid to do a job and if they are not doing that job, they should be held responsible just like any other person.

As much as the situation with McLeod and Sheppard frustrates me, it frustrates me just as much that nothing seems to get done about it. I have a hard time believing that the coaches in this league are OK with the status quo. If they are OK with it, shame on them, if they are not, where is the uproar? I certainly hope that the meetings this summer will bring some fireworks and some well deserved pink slips starting at the top.