For Blair, It’s Official Business Shadle Park Graduate Spends The Majority Of His Time Keeping A Close Eye On Whl Referees
On a Saturday night in the Arena, the puck robbers, the checkers, the goaltenders and the snipers command the motion of ten thousands sets of eyes.
Kerry Blair is tracking the action from another angle.
As one of four Western Hockey League supervisors of officials, Blair monitors the referee and the two linesemen, looking for the generally unnoticed.
What he scribbles down in pressboxes in Spokane, Tri-City and occasionally Portland influences decisions on who wears the referee’s armband full-time and who doesn’t, and why.
Linesmen who work frequently are separated from those who go back to school.
The WHL is a developmental league not only for players. Officials are developing, too, or dropping out.
Blair watches their presence, their attitude, their positioning and skating. He grades procedures and signals, rules interpretations and applications.
Kerry Blair judges the judges.
He does it as objectively as he can knowing as a former player and official that perfection is a practical impossibility.
Due process is a fleeting glance and a snap and sometimes harsh decision.
So Blair, 39, a ‘74 Shadle High grad who knows how hard it can be, is a sympathetic critic.
A call last April 13 in the seventh game of the WHL West Division semifinals stands out as the most critical referee’s decision in his 25-year association with officiating.
In that game referee Mike Hasenfratz waved off an overtime goal that would have given a tough playoff series to Spokane. What Hasenfratz saw in a critical flash in the Tri-City Coliseum wasn’t what Spokane coaches and fans saw.
Kerry Blair saw the play. Nearly 10 months and another season later he’s still not sure how he would have called it.
Initially, replays seemed to confirm that the referee made a very big mistake. Controversy brewed for weeks.
Was the puck intentionally directed in by means other than the stick? The referee saw it that way and voided the goal.
“It wasn’t as cut and dried a call as some people think,” Blair said on one of his many nights in the Arena pressbox. “The call was that the leg was lifted and turned,” to deflect the puck into the net.
Was Hasenfratz wrong?
Maybe. If so, if in the second that an impression forms, when the referee has only the powers of his own recognition and the advice of his linesmen, the error was acceptable.
“From the TV replay I saw I couldn’t tell,” Blair said. “It wasn’t obvious to me. Even with NHL-caliber replay it would have been a tough call.”
No goal. No recourse.
There’s no replay in the WHL.
Blair is paid to second-guess but he tends to use that prerogative carefully, knowing how difficult the process can be.
Even during his playing days - he went to training camp with ‘73 Medicine Hat Tigers - he began working as a linesman. By his late 20s Blair was making rank as a hockey referee.
Starting at 15, officiating youth and rec league games here, Blair went though four levels of USA Hockey certification and six levels of Canadian amateur, one of the few U.S. officials of his time to reach level 6.
On the way he was the referee being evaluated.
The old Cranbrook Royals were in Spokane for a senior amateur Western International League game when the ugliness started early.
Blair remembers handing out “a fair number of penalties.” In protest the Royals pulled their goaltender and let Spokane score.
The conflict escalated. The Cranbrook coach yanked his team off the ice.
The young referee had an observer upstairs and a showdown on his hands.
“I thought, ‘Well, I might as well write this off,’ ” Blair said. “I thought my evaluation was shot.”
Tempers cooled, Cranbrook came back out and finished the game.
To his surprise, Blair found that his evaluation went fine. He’d handled an odd situation not of his own making.
Although he never made it to the NHL, he would go on to referee in bigger settings. Central Hockey League exhibitions. The Olympic Sports Festival in Colorado Springs. WHL games for eight years.
Blair quit after the ‘89-90 season but remains plugged into the game and its evolution as a supervisor.
“It’s a part-time job - part-time pay and very part-time money,” he says.
He likes most of what he’s seeing.
“The game is played at a higher level today than it was 10 years ago,” Blair said. “A decade or more ago the emphasis was on physical play. Through rules changes and emphasis there’s more finesse.”
The game from an official’s view is different in Spokane than in Moose Jaw or Regina.
“The fans there are more knowledgeable but it’s more of an event for them here,” he said. “With more people (attending) comes more pressure.”
Consistency is an elusive concept in major junior hockey, with more than 80 linesmen and two dozen referees. Experience varies. Given that, Blair is not keen on the idea of allowing linesmen to share in the decisions that in hockey are the province of the referee.
“We move the guys along,” Blair said of the developmental nature of the league. “A guy moves up or moves out. If a guy is here for four or five years (without improving) he’s usually released and somebody with potential is brought in.”
Top-end referees might work International League games, or Tier II hockey as well as three games a week in the WHL. Some call Canadian college hockey.
“A guy might be working four to six games a week,” Blair said. “At that rate they can make a living from September through the playoffs, through March.”
Part of his job is dealing with club management. On any given night Blair might look up from his notebook into the angry face of a WHL general manager.
“They have concerns and questions,” Blair said diplomatically not long ago, after one West Division GM bolted from an adjoining room to take out his frustration over the officiating on Blair.
“Lots of time it’s letting them blow off steam,” he said. “If it’s not an on-going thing we don’t worry about it too much.”
The storm builds. A referee, even a retired one, remembers that even the worst of it blows over.
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