Читать книгу Hope and Heartbreak in Toronto. Life as a Maple Leafs Fan онлайн

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If you follow or play hockey long enough, you’ll start to notice the offending individual in many ways — the mannerisms, the way he skates, the way he waves off calls. Depending how much hockey you played as a youngster and how high a level you managed to make it to once you got a little older, you picked up on these annoying ref-isms more as you went along.

It first hit me how grating certain refs could be when I was playing AAA rep hockey as a kid. A few just seemed to have a sense of superiority about them when they entered the arena. Aside from teenagers or early-twenties types who toil as minor-hockey refs, or others who handle rec league games for pocket money, most zebras, if they were honest with themselves, would admit they’d rather be playing the game than calling it. Seriously, would you rather play in the National Hockey League, or be one of the guys who are noticed only if he makes a mistake?

And there’s the rub. It really takes guts to skate around knowing full well that virtually every time you blow the whistle half the people on the ice will be annoyed, the other half asking “What took you so long?”