You can say goodbye to the goal judge as you knew him, or at the very least, where you knew him. From the Globe and Mail:
In case you missed it, the NHL has allowed clubs to move their goal judges to the press box or a similar spot, depending on the arena and its configuration. The idea is that the goal judges can still watch the game from afar and flick the light switch through wireless technology.
I guess a few more seats per game is worth the move. I wouldn’t mind so much as the goal judge job has lost some of it’s meaning in this age of video replay. But as we saw several times last year, video replay wasn’t able to tell the ultimate answer to the ultimate hockey question: goal or no goal. One more set of eyes in the right place provides an important tool until the NHL can figure out a fool resistant way of indicating goals (remember what they say about fools).
And if you have ever read In The Bin by Lloyd Freeberg, you know the importance of these guys, as they explain the reasons they blew the call.
Or, you can look at this YouTube video. You can’t really do that to a penalty time keeper.