To be a good referee requires a very deep understanding of the game and its players, and is most certainly an extremely difficult job at the best of times. Where I feel the greatest room for improvement in terms of the officiating of hockey as a sport is less related to ability and more related to the objectives and motivations behind the referees. While any obvious bias is of course not great, the mindset of modern officiating and game management style refereeing is severely impacting the entertainment value of hockey as well as its intrinsic fairness. Narrowing down the number of acceptable calls in a game and ensuring that teams are called in service of equality rather than actual infractions committed is a cancer on the sport and allows teams with slower, less talented players to stay relevant simply by breaking rules constantly, with the confidence of knowing that unless they do something particularly egregious, they'll only receive 3-4 penalties that night (and likely receive as many powerplays even if the opponent does not commit as many infractions). It's bad so fix it