Good on ya, Prim. Are you in Phoenix or just a Yotes fan?
In Phoenix. We've got 6 rinks here. I work at 5 of them (the 6th is 40 miles away, to hell with that). Officiating could be in a better off state, not gonna lie. I'm pretty experienced but sometimes I go into high school games with a line partner (I usually line and don't wear the bands) who's been an official for like 3 weeks. They're still working on remembering to be inside the blue line for line calls and then pivoting outside, when in high school hockey as a linesman you really should have that ingrained and considering teens with raging testosterone are more likely to start a fight for no reason than go offside, be more focusing on your "unwritten" role of being the one to physically break up altercations... it usually goes a little like this:
Line partner (front linesman): "Good!" (15 feet off blue line
)
Me (back linesman): *skates 10 feet from blue line*
Referee: *blows whistle to stop play for the goalie freezing the puck, scrum breaks out in front of the net*
Me (skating in hard towards scrum): "I've got blue 15!"
Line partner: *floats at blue line and stares at scrum blankly*
Me: *headdesk*
Edit: to be clear, this is demonstrating the shortage of on-ice officials in my city. As an example, in the last 24 hours, since I'm on the mass-email list, I've gotten at least 5 mass emails for game coverage this weekend. I've been able to volunteer for 0 of them, because I already have some other game. So, less-than-ideal situations have to happen here, because somebody is better than nobody.
