Former hockey official Jim Doyle still lives for the game
GLENS FALLS, N.Y. » Jim Doyle isn’t at all surprised by the raucous crowds that turned out to support the Adirondack Thunder during their recent Kelly Cup playoff run.
It’s been a tradition since 1981 when the former Adirondack Red Wings won their first AHL championship.
Doyle was right on top of the action as a young referee, just starting out on a career that’s taken him to all levels of hockey, including the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid where he worked the semifinal game between Sweden and Finland, right after the U. S. team’s stunning victory over the Soviets in the “Miracle on Ice.”
“One of the highlights of my career, though, was the game between the U.S. and USSR at Madison Square Garden the Saturday be- fore the Olympics started,” Doyle said. “It was a 3 p.m. start and at 1:30 there were no officials there. They forgot to assign them! Long story short, they knew I was in the building and my Olympic colleagues were with me. So I wound up refereeing that game, broadcast live on ABC Wide World of Sports with 17,250 people on hand.”
“That was a turning point in my career,” he said.
The funniest part of the whole experience is that Doyle was an Olympic linesman, who hadn’t yet become a referee.
“But I agreed to do that game, so they had to go to Gerry Cosby’s, a famous sporting goods store in Madison Square Garden, and get me a referee’s sweater with arm bands on it,” he said, smiling.”
Today, Doyle is an independent contractor who works as an officiating manager for the ECHL and AHL, covering well over 100 minor league games per year -- in addition to his regular full-time job with a security firm.
“I’ve been all over the world with hockey,” Doyle said. “It’s a terrific sport. I’m passionate about it and I love giving back. What I love doing now is working with the officials to help them get better. They’re learning, just like players. This is a developmental league. That’s why they’re here.”
While fans follow the action and cheer each time there’s a goal or hard check along the boards, Doyle’s focus is on the people wearing black-and-white striped jerseys -- the game’s referees and linesmen.
The Florida Everblades, which eliminated the Thunder, and Colorado Eagles are currently playing in the ECHL’s Kelly Cup Finals.
“Every series in the Kelly Cup playoffs has someone there to observe the officials and what’s going on,” Doyle said. “We meet with the coaches before every game, talking about whatever is on their mind.”
In the first round, for example, Adirondack goaltender Mackenzie Blackwood was sidelined after getting steamrolled by a Worcester opponent. Early in the second round, netminder Oliver Mantha suffered a similar fate against Reading.
Before the next game, Doyle reinforced to game officials the importance of protecting goaltenders.
“At the end of each game I meet with the officials,” he said. “If something significant happens during the game I get the video sent to me so I can see it, and then we can have a conversation with the officials about what they saw and what happened.”
Doyle’s career started out as a linesman in the old North American Hockey League while he was still in college, in 1976.
“I didn’t start skating until I was 16 years old,” he said. “I realized by the time I was 18 that I wasn’t going to the National Hockey League as a player.”
But his officiating career spanned parts of four decades before retiring in 2007. His last game was a St. Patrick’s Day contest between the Hershey Bears and former Philadelphia Phantoms, in Hershey.
He’s been an officiating observer-supervisor for the past 10 years.
Living in South Jersey, Doyle primarily covers games from Pennsylvania to New Hampshire. However, Glens Falls’ cozy 4,800- seat Cool Insuring Arena is still one of his favorite stops.
“This building really resonates,” he said.