Open letter to the WCHA coaches (By HeidiSioux62)

Open letter to WCHA Coaches

This is an open letter to the WCHA coaches regarding what I feel is a growing problem in the WCHA – a lack of quality officiating. I have sent this letter to all of the WCHA coaches. I have no illusions that my little letter will change anything, but it will be interesting to see if I get any responses and if so, what those responses are.

Dear WCHA Coaches,
I am writing to you as a life long fan of college hockey and in particular WCHA hockey. Tom Kurvers, the player personnel director for the Phoenix Coyotes was quoted in the (Minneapolis Star Tribune) as saying "The best league in this country is the NHL, obviously, but do you know what's the second-best league?" Kurvers said. "It's the WCHA. In the same article he is quote as saying “The WCHA is the second-greatest place to play hockey in the United States."

I truly believe this, however, I am becoming concerned with the direction that officiating in the league is going. There have been several games this season that have been decided by the officials and not the players, most notably the 2 incorrect calls regarding goals that resulted in apologies being issued by the league. There have also been games decided by numerous “not-calls”. I have watched as extremely skilled layers form all teams (Ryan Lasch, Chad Rau, Andreas Nodl, T.J. Oshie, Garrett Roe, Ryan Duncan, Tyler Bozak, Blake Wheeler, Peter Rouleau and Kyle Turris to name just a few) have egregious penalties committed against them with officials directly watching and often commenting and no call is made. This is extremely unfair to these kids who work so very hard and play their hearts out every game.

The WCHA has consistently been able to recruit the best talent that chooses to attend college and play hockey. Academics of course should be the first priority, but realistically many of these young men have aspirations to be professional players and choose a program based on how it may be able to facilitate them in reaching their goal. I believe that as a whole the coaches in this league work very hard to assist their players in achieving whatever goal a player may have. I also believe that this hard work is being undermined by the lack of high quality officiating.

I would respectfully encourage each of you to speak with your former skill players now playing professional hockey and ask them their impressions of the officiating in their professional league as compared to the WCHA. I would then encourage you to bring this feedback to the attention of Commissioner McLeod and director of officials, Greg Shepherd at your summer league meetings.
The WCHA is, in my opinion, the best hockey in the world. The coaches, fans and most importantly, the young men who give everything they have game in and game out, deserve to be able to play to the best of their ability by having the rules set out in the (NCAA rule book) enforced.