This Hockey Ref That Took A Beer To The Balls Needs To Realize The Dangers That Come With Being An Official

Referee Dominic Bedard took a beer can to the nuts a few nights ago after giving Francis Perron a penalty in the QMJHL. Perron’s 29-year-old brother threw a beer at the ref and it hit him square in the nether regions. He was later arrested and could be charged with assault with a weapon.


​On the surface, being a referee doesn't seem like that bad of a gig. You get to watch high level athletics from the field of play. You get to make decisions that have an immediate impact on the game. If there was no cons to becoming an official then every sports fan that wasn't good enough to play professionally would grow up wanting to become one. Instead officiating is one of the most thankless careers a person can have, and it's not hard to see why. Every call -right or wrong- is met with a varying amount of scrutiny. Scrutiny that -at it's worst- manifests itself through physical assault. So yeah, it does suck that this guy took a cold one to the nuts, but that's just a rare, unfortunate occupational hazard as far as I am concerned. You enter a field where every single one of your job responsibilities entails pissing off a group of drunk, emotionally invested assholes and you might occasionally get a beer thrown at you. Most of the time the person throwing that beer is going to have the aim of a drunk 50 year old man (because it will usually be a drunk 50 year old man). However, you do run the risk of crossing paths with the 29 year old brother of one of the players that also happens to have a Major League arm and Greg Maddux-like control. Those are the times when you really have to sit back -with an ice pack on your groin- and remember that there is reason that you get paid for what you do. 

h/t Uproxx