NHL referee suspended for opening up in interview

By Cory Buck | Feb 4, 2015

Feb 3, 2015; St. Louis, MO, USA; Referee Tim Peel (20) during the second period in the game between the St. Louis Blues and the Tampa Bay Lightning at Scottrade Center. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports /

NHL referee Tim Peel was suspended for one game in light of a revealing interview with Yahoo’s Greg Wyshynski.

The NHL doesn’t play when it comes to its referees. We don’t hear from them, and sometimes it feels like they don’t hear from us. It’s like the officials live in a bubble, untouched by outside scrutiny and despite a myriad of mind-boggling penalties and mistakes that have plagued pro hockey games for as long as we can remember, the league has no intention of making their referees any more available for explanation. Now, at the expense of his game day check, long-time referee Tim Peel has a few answers.

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Peel sat down with Greg Wyshynski, editor-in-chief of the Puck Daddy blog at Yahoo! Sports not so much to defend his past gaffes, but to clarify the context surrounding them. Also, he wanted to down a few shots of tequila, as per their picture on the article’s headline.

While there aren’t many direct quotes from Peel as the interview appears to be a mish-mash of on-and-off the record talk, but this quote rings particularly intriguing.

"Here’s what I learned about Tim Peel in 90 minutes on two bar stools: He knows who he is. He has a level of self-evaluation that’s impressive, although I wished I had asked if it was influenced at all by the public scorn he deals with.My concern was that it was going to be an evening of him defending each criticism I’ve given him through the years; instead, it was an acknowledgment that he screws up sometimes, and screws up grandly."

One big example used was an egregious diving call on Anaheim Ducks defenseman Sami Vatanen, who was clearly high sticked, then fell to the ice as a result because, again, a professional athlete whacked him in the chin with a piece of synthetic lumber.

“But Peel knows it was a bad call, to the point where he skated up to the Ducks bench and apologized the next time he officiated an Anaheim game,” Wyshynski writes. “So why make it? Well, because the NHL wanted a crackdown on diving, and with that mandate, he felt compelled to make that call.”

As a result of the interview, the NHL suspended Peel for one game. We wonder if it has more to do with revealing bits like the comment on that Vatanen piece than it does with a few shots of tequila.

We can’t get confirmation on that much, but what we do know is that the NHL does have at least some control over the ebb and flow of their referees and the calls they make, and that might explain why the public gets so few glimpses at the job and the people performing it every night.

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