CHN hits it out of the park.

If you have not seen this article from the College Hockey News; you have got to read it because Adam Wodon really hits it out of the park. This article is a lot like the zinger Virg Foss wrote for the Grand Forks Herald last week. Kind of saying the same things many of us are saying only this is from a writer from the outside looking in at the WCHA. The view can't be that impressive. I know from a fan of the WCHA I can look at the ECAC and say that I would rather have Paul Stewart supervising our officials than Greg Shepherd.

I mean it's a serious question and should be addressed. Take the ECAC; Paul Stewart was a beloved NHL official, Greg Shepherd is not. My question is do we hold the WCHA officials and leadership culpable if a player gets hurt on their watch? There are no teeth to the WCHA's suspensions or discipline, If I am a player I can do about just about anything on the ice and only get a one game suspension.

We have been pretty critical of the WCHA officiating over the years, and rightly so. Actually, in general, offciating at the college level isn't the best, but that's to be expected, actually, and there's not much you can do about it. On that score, we rarely harp on officiating. But the WCHA seems to have this "let them play" atmosphere that, on the one hand, fans have loved vis-a-vis the other conferences, then deplored because it escalates into things like this.

Of course, it's not just this. The WCHA has bungled so many video review calls in recent years, I've lost count.

The issues stem from the top, and the leadership in the conference does not seem very interesting in cracking down on anything. When the other leagues all announced a crackdown on obstruction a number of years ago, for example, the WCHA remained very Laissez-faire about it. Well, that's one thing, but when the league keeps a hands off approach to any discipline of any kind, things start to snowball into instances like this.

Again, forget whether we should indict Aaron Marvin in particular. I just want to know how in the world that play is not a "contact to the head" penalty, a rule that was put in specifically to take the guesswork out of things by ruling any hit to the head, intentional or not, an infraction.

As players have become bigger, faster and stronger over the years, the potential for head injuries has exponentially increased. That is why more and more protective measures have been put in place. But that only works if these things are enforced. Bungling a video review call is one thing — being non-chalent about enforcing hits to the head calls is something that can put players' careers, or lives, in jeopardy. [Read the Whole Article]