Women get two-ref system
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP: IIHF finally catching up to growing trend in female hockey
MALMO, Sweden — The overtime period of the 2014 Olympic women’s hockey final was chock full of drama and overseen by a single referee.
Three penalties — one for tripping Hayley Wickenheiser on a breakaway that had the Canadian bench screaming for a penalty shot — and Marie-Philip Poulin’s overtime winner scored on a four-on-three made for a wild finish.
Veteran referee Joy Tottman of Britain was the lone referee assigned to manage it.
Seven years after it was introduced to international men’s hockey, the women have two referees and two linesmen for the first time at this year’s world championship.
Men have had a second referee at their world championship since 2008 and in the last two Winter Olympics.
“We’ve been talking about it that long,” said Melody Davidson, Hockey Canada’s director of female hockey. “We’ve built the depth of officials up now so we’re ready.”
Davidson sits on the International Ice Hockey Federation’s women’s committee.
IIHF officiating committee secretary Konstantin Komissarov told The Canadian Press in 2009 there was no reason to add a second referee to the women’s game. He pointed to some of the lopsided scores as a reason it didn’t warrant another on-ice official.
That the women now deserve the same officiating manpower as men is another sign of progress in the female game.
But the IIHF is just catching up to both the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, which has operated four-official crews since 2010, and NCAA Division 1 female hockey, which has operated a two-referee system since 2008-09.
Canadian universities still have one referee in women’s hockey.
The difference between the North American and international games, however, is the CWHL and the NCAA incorporate male officials into female games. The IIHF remains committed to running allfemale crews.
“I think it will still be females,” Davidson said. “We’ve built the depth up so now we have a lot of female officials with good experience from the Sochi Olympics, the Vancouver Olympics, even some from Torino.
“The speed of the game as we saw in Sochi is picking up and every year it gets better and better. A lot of rinks we play in don’t have replays or the extra cameras that you have in the male game. The importance of having four officials out there is key.”
Montreal’s Gabrielle Ariano-Lortie is among the 10 international referees assigned to the eight-country world championship.
The 31-year-old worked November’s Four Nations Cup, which served as a test event of four-official crews, in Kamloops.
The IIHF held a camp in Finland last summer to train the women in the system. Three female officials from Europe were sent to Montreal to work CWHL games this past winter.
“We don’t have a lot of games back home that allow us to practise it,” Ariano-Lortie said. “There are a lot of European referees. It’s a challenge to work with officials who don’t do it a lot and we don’t work with them a lot.”