Hockey Coach Calls The League In The Middle Of The Game To Let Them Know The Refs Are Trash
This is Miroslav Frycer. He spent some time with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 80s and apparently he’s coaching these days somewhere in Austria. Or maybe the team plays in the Austrian league but they’re actually based out of Czech Republic. I don’t know. None of that actually pertains to the story here, but I just wanted it to be clear that I did my best to add a little research in here.
Anyway, apparently the Austrian Hockey League is dealing with the same issue that quite literally every hockey league in the world has been battling for centuries; the fact that refs are absolutely brutal at their jobs. Don’t get me wrong, I realize that it’s a tough job to get everything right and it’s quite possibly the least rewarding job of all time. Nobody ever leaves a hockey game saying “wow, those refs really did a great job out there tonight”. Nobody ever cheers for the refs during games unless it’s a sarcastic cheer after they finally get a call right after missing the last 50. I also can’t imagine that many of these guys were ever growing up thinking to themselves, “man, I really want to be a ref one day”. So I get that they’re stuck in a pretty situation here. But regardless, refs are almost always terrible at their job.
And apparently they were so bad on this particular day that Miroslav Frycer had to break out his phone in the middle of the game just to call up the league to bitch about the officiating. Which is an incredible move which should become more mainstream. Because here’s the thing–you can never complain to a ref about horrible officiating because they all take it so goddamn personally. For some reason, refs are incapable of understanding that you don’t have anything against them as a human being, you just hate the way they’re calling this shit show of a game. And once they start taking that shit personally, that’s when they really start fucking you with calls. They’re all just too sensitive. So how do you avoid that situation entirely? You go right around the refs and directly to the league. It’s the ultimate “can I speak to your manager” move because you’re not asking to speak to the manager, you’re going directly to the source. Gonna be tough for a ref to start making some bullshit calls out of spite now that he knows that the league is going to be watching the rest of the game.
So here’s to hoping that Miroslav Frycer has started a movement. If I had to put some money down on who would be the first NHL head coach to pull this move, I think Torts would be the smart money. From there I’d probably go with Peter Laviolette and Bruce Boudreau. I’d say that Mike Sullivan has a real “can I speak to your manager” face but we all know that the Penguins always have the refs on their side so he’d never have to get that upset over poor officiating. Maybe a dark horse would be a guy like Ken Hitchcock, but Hitch is such a beauty that he’d probably call the league just to fuck with them instead of actually complaining about the refs.