Is your league USA Hockey sanctioned?

I’m talking youth and butcher leagues.

What’s the big deal, you ask?

Plenty. You see, when your kid or uncle plays in a USA Hockey sanctioned league, there is a substantial amount of policing and discipline that may go unnoticed, especially for the casual fan or participant.

And who does this policing?

Why of course, us USA Hockey employees.

Get to the skinny, OS.

OK, the predominant area that I am talking about is game reporting, normally associated with misconducts, major penalties or other behavior that would normally be classified as uncivilized, but for the fact that it occurs in a contact sport on ice.

Example. Buster is a 5-8 defensive behemoth playing on a U12 team. Buster, in an attempt to execute a fair defensive play, accidently finds his elbow making head contact with a 4-10 winger stationed in front of the net. Buster is, of course, assessed a 2-minute head contact infraction along with the associated 10-minute misconduct. 

Buster doesn’t like it, and tells the official it’s a weak call. Buster refuses to go the box, and with additional incitement from an uneducated coach, Buster continues abusing the veteran Level 3 and is eventually assessed a game misconduct.

What Buster and his stepdad probably do not know is that pursuant to employment obligations fostered upon USA Hockey officials, the referee is now obligated to go home after the game and submit a game report describing the circumstances. This report, at best, takes close to 10 minutes to prepare, assuming the system is functioning correctly, which it often isn’t. Once the report is submitted, USA Hockey and its local governing body take over, and assess appropriate discipline.

In other words, there’s more to it than simply being thrown out of that game.

Now, the function provided by the USA Hockey official, by having to go home or use a personal cell phone to file a report with the authorities, completely smacks of an employer-employee relationship. 

Let’s put it this way: When I hire a guy to install a window in my house, he is under no obligation to file any report with me for anything. He is an independent contractor. His job is to install the window properly and execute all tendered waiver of liens.

Let’s provide an additional example – something that happened two hours ago. I am referring to a match penalty and game misconduct assessed in a low-level JV game. After advising the scorekeeper of the penalties, he was subsequently told to get us photocopies of the complete sheets after the game. Once we obtained the sheets, us USA Hockey employees were then required to gather all of the information into a USA Hockey template on our home computers and submit the report, an exercise which, when everything works as intended, takes at least 10-12 minutes. Naturally, much of the information on the sheets is either illegible, and when there are out-of-state teams in town, it’s often difficult to determine which associations they belong to when the team name and sheet is otherwise not informative. That’s more personal time expended. 

In my example above, it took OS 15 minutes to complete the report as the sheet was incomplete, and without exact information in the fields, the report will not send. As OS did not have some of the complete information, OS had to improvise and put additional notes in the report to clarify matters.

That’s what an employee does.

Try forcing your window installer to do that.

Now, what is the import of all this?

It is OS’s opinion that all rights and obligations due to employees are in effect for the protection of every USA Hockey official. And one of these issues is the discovery of relevant employee information. See, when there is an injury or lawsuit, one side requests all of the employee information from the opponent in order to prove its case. That puts an employee’s computer or cell phone at risk for discovery.

It’s OS’s opinion that game reports, and the legal implications of such reports, should solely be submitted via communication devices provided by USA Hockey. Employees should not subject their personal property to discovery risk. Every local affiliate should provide a central computer or cell phone for the submission of such reports or any other information pertaining to officiating controversies.

Now don’t get this wrong: OS understands that reports have to be made and somebody has to submit the information. And it’s the referees that call the penalties listed on the scoresheet. Naturally, it would be better if that was the extent of our “independent contractor” duties, and the USA-Hockey-registered tournament directors or rink managers would be the ones to contact the National Office. But if veteran officials are going to have to walk in at midnight from a beer league game and start hammering away at the computer to file a report, there has to be a quicker way, especially when all the information required to populate the fields is not attainable, thereby precluding simple submission of the report. 

How about simply texting the scoresheet to the National Office with a couple of notes attached? Maybe an independent contractor won’t have a beef with that.

Back to employment status. You can call us independent contractors, but OS has been advised that some unemployment compensation cases filed by referees have been successful. 

Injured on the ice? Try filing a workers’ compensation case like any other employee. 

Veteran Level 3s, remember this next time you file a mandated report in an on-ice injury situation.

PI lawyers, are you listening?

And don’t say you can still ref games without USA Hockey certification so there is no issue calling us independent contractors. That won’t mean anything at summary judgment.

Let’s put the independent back into the independent contractor.

 

Questions and comments can be sent to editor@letsplayhockey.com, via Twitter @OSpeaking or through the Let’s Play Hockey Facebook page.

 

Photo: Christine Wisch