Geoff Baker: COVID-19-related NHL officiating shortages raise concerns about quality of pandemic-impacted games

A few weeks back, veteran NHL referee Eric Furlatt took the ice at Climate Pledge Arena to work a game between the Kraken and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Furlatt, 50, was partaking in his 19th game this season. But he never finished the contest and hasn’t worked since: pulled during the first intermission when told he’d tested positive for COVID-19.

According to an NHL spokesperson, the Canadian citizen left Seattle by car the next day, crossed the border into British Columbia and finished his quarantine there as recommended by that country’s federal government.

As colleague Marisa Ingemi wrote last week, NHL referees and linesmen are struggling with COVID the same way players have. Since the NHL doesn’t keep backup officials at regular-season games, the Kraken and Penguins finished off overseen by a lone referee and two linesmen instead of the usual four-man officiating crew.

There have already been several games played with three-man crews this month as up to 13 officials were speculated to be in COVID-19 protocol by last week. The league doesn’t release COVID details for referees and linesmen, but their cases further amplify questions about the quality of the on-ice product during these pandemic-impacted games.

After all, there’s a reason the NHL stopped using one referee in 1998 and added a second. The game was becoming too fast a quarter century ago, never mind now.

I spoke Tuesday to retired longtime NHL referee Tim Peel about the risks of relying on three-man crews for what could be a significant part of the season’s remaining games.

“That’s not realistic this day and age because of the speed of the game,” Peel said. “It used to be that when you had three officials — or one ref and two linesmen — the red line was in play for us. So, you couldn’t stretch it from the goal line up to the opposite blue line. That would be an offside pass.”

But the NHL eliminated such two-line offside passes in 2005 to speed up play. Today’s long stretch passes resulted.

“It’s impossible for one referee to keep up with the play,” said Peel, who officiated 1,362 games from 1999 to last March. “It’s just not possible. And even if you throw the red line back in (reinstating the two-line offside rule), I still think it would be very difficult to work in a three-man system just because of the speed of the game.

“These players are just so much faster than they were five, six, 10 or 15 years ago.”

Peel did leave the NHL under a cloud last March, dismissed only a month before a preplanned retirement after being caught on a hot mic during a Fox broadcast in Nashville. He’d just called a penalty against the Predators and quipped to the second referee that it “wasn’t much, but I wanted to get a (bleeping) penalty against Nashville early in the …”

The audio cut from there, but it sounded as if Peel had invented a penalty to set a tone for the game. Peel said in subsequent interviews it was a poor choice of words, he wasn’t making penalties up and was simply embarrassed about what he immediately felt was a weak call and had acted defensively when the second ref — whom he greatly respected — asked him about it.

Anyway, it was a bad end to a 22-year career that included working 90 playoff contests. But I don’t think it invalidates Peel’s experiences and insights on officiating games short-handed.

It’s bad enough teams are being pressed into short-handed action, with minor leaguers increasingly filling rosters decimated by players in COVID-19 protocol. The Kraken will play the Philadelphia Flyers at home on Wednesday night with only six defensemen available — two of them, Jamie Oleksiak and Carson Soucy, having not skated for 10 days before exiting COVID protocol Tuesday.

“This is the group of six that is available for us, right at this point in time,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “We’ll manage their minutes. We’ll see where they’re at as we as we get into the game and as we work through the game tomorrow night.”

Complicating matters, all three of their AHL defensemen under NHL contracts — Cale Fleury, Connor Carrick and Gustav Oloffson — are also in protocol and can’t be added yet.

The Kraken on Tuesday also had their Jan. 8 contest in Winnipeg postponed as part of a broader NHL rescheduling of nine games in Canada until COVID attendance restrictions are possibly eased at arenas in that country. It’s the fifth Kraken postponement announced this month, meaning more games will need to be compressed into shorter time periods later.

It’s becoming hectic to manage professionally. You have to feel for Hakstol as he’s forced to throw players on the ice he ordinarily wouldn’t be rushing back.

“This is about competitiveness,” Hakstol said. “There’s going to be some rough patches in terms of how guys are feeling. In terms of how clean some things look systematically. But mentally and physically being ready to compete is going to be at the top of the list.”

The question is how competitive this will really look as far as NHL standards go. Sure, we’re talking pro sports, where players often play in discomfort.

We’ve long heard complaints about top NHL stars being hacked and slashed into submission during the playoffs when penalties aren’t called as frequently. Well, how will they fare when penalties are missed by three-man officiating crews? Especially with less talented players plugging rosters. And others rushing back into service before they can keep up.

That’s when the clutching, grabbing and hooking starts. And injury risk increases.

Peel figures some experienced referees could work alone in a pinch. But he worries about guys with fewer games behind them being forced to work short-handed and whether “the standard of officiating is going to be at where the league expects.”

There’s no easy fix. Referees and linesmen fly commercially and are at greater risk of COVID infection from other passengers.

And there’s likely a whole lot more COVID coming. For players and officials both as the NHL sludges through this pandemic with a human toll being taken nightly at arenas, including one the Kraken calls home.