If I Had It My Way This High School Hockey Ref Would Be Getting Two For Embellishment

@Deadspin it's tough being a ref for High School hockey in Buffalo NY pic.twitter.com/hZBhWANXAq

— courtney kelly (@courtneykelly8) February 6, 2017

One of the first things you learn once you lace up the skates and start wheeling well enough to piss some people off is that the person who retaliates is more likely to get caught, so it's no surprise that the crowd's reaction grew bigger once the zebra got what he had coming. Still, is this random high school league in upstate New York not taking the NHL's lead and trying to get diving out of the game? We are talking about a flop for the ages here. If we are going to start throwing kids out for abusing officials then we better start holding those same officials accountable when they abuse the benefit of the doubt we give them by assuming they are fat, unathletic bums that can't keep an edge when they receive an equal but opposite shove. As far as I am concerned, stripes deserved a shot to the shoulder after he got physical with a kid under the assumption that he wouldn't hit him back, but that referee didn't just draw his own call. He tried to paint a goddamn picture with that sloppy stroke of artificial clumsiness. If that's the type of chicanery that's going on in youth hockey than we are going to need to bring in NBA refs to officiate the shameless flopping of officials that apparently can't assert their authority over teenagers without putting their hands on them.