There are some calls missed that are particularly dangerous to safety like the elbowing to the head that should be reviewed after the game and probably a fine.
As to AI, yes if there were programs to that level of specificity like in a video game, where your heroes/champions naturally can't break certain coded restraints, then yes it would work. We're not there yet, we won't be there yet by the fall.
Then there's the the "call it by the book" folks. It's always a kind of naive argument to me to be frank. There's no such thing as "calling it by the book." There really isn't. Why do we have lawyers and court cases and precedents and lawsuits in the real world? Because words are interpreted. Words don't have inherent meaning without humans proscribing characteristics to them. It's a really simple moniker for talking heads on TV to say "call it by the book." It's something easy to repeat after other people. But it's impractical to actually carry out.
I just opened up the NHL rule book to the first random rule I could find. "Abuse of officials." No person may "challenge or dispute" an official's rulings before during or after a game. Wow, funny, I think I see that like 10 times every game, some player or some coach go up to a ref and give them an earful. What constitutes disputing and what constitutes discussing? I don't know, call it by the book. "No person may...not limited to obscene, abusive, profane, gestures or comments of a personal nature to an official." Particularly with the words "not limited to" I mean what kind of communicative actions to an official are potentially any of these things? Throwing my hands in the air? Asking the ref "how could you miss that?" Words inherently require interpretation, that's why refs go to school where they study videos to get a general sense of how the law is being interpreted, and then fans see that interpretation play out on the ice. But there's no such thing as "calling it by the book." Refs call plays based on how other refs in the past have called plays. That's the use of precedent. And precedents can change when the department hands down a decision, "we have decided that this (insert video) used to be called as X now will be called as Y." But none of that is in the phrasing of the laws.
And then the natural response is, "well if the book is so vague it should just be rewritten clearer." Again, not helpful. Because this isn't a fault specific to the NHL rule book, it's a fault that every law book in every country and organization in the world grapples with. And some people will say "oh well the NBA does better", NBA fans, NFL fans complain just as much about refs as any other fans. There are two ways to try to increase the specificity of a law. One is that you add more adjectives. "Don't hit someone" becomes "don't forcefully hit someone intentionally." That seems more specific, but in reality you just added 2 new adverbs that interpreters of the law now have to use discretion on. There is some guidance by the common meanings of these terms, like if someone slips and tumbles and rolls back first into another skater, ok that's probably not intentional. But on the margins you've created more room for variability or differences in interpretation. So that doesn't actually help. The other way is to introduce parameters that are universally defined. Like "don't hit someone at X angle, Y yards from the boards, with Z pounds amount of force", and probably honestly you'd still need more parameters than that but just as an example. That is very specific, to use scientific values. And also, how are human refs going to be able to make those measurements? They're not. In video games you can write programs so that these parameters aren't violated, that is why Dota or League of Legends for example doesn't have in-game officials. But in physical sports there's really no such option. Probably the most specific you can get is "don't lift X above your shouldn't", or "don't hit Y below some area", but refs can't measure force, distance, momentum, angles, other things that computers can measure, and especially not in real time. The best they can do is what they do, which is to approximate what is going on, compared to previous interpretations by other refs. The subjectivity is inherent to the human element, in the boarding rule it literally states "there is an enormous amount of judgment involved in the application of this rule by referees." It's inescapable.
There are things that the league does need to focus on, like the elbowing in the head incident. The league is saying they're taking a strong stance on player safety, particularly with regards to concussions. I do applaud the steps they've taken. If a player is ruled to have elbowed another player in the head intentionally, they should get a penalty. Maybe they should even get a fine after the game, even if it was missed in the game. That will send a message about tolerable behaviors in the league. But when it comes to like "I think this other team's player used slightly too much force as to constitute a holding on my team's player" or "I think my team's player usage of force in holding the other team's player was just within the appropriate amount", followed by "refs you suck, you never call it by the book", it's easy to be the ones criticizing others but if you were placed in a zebra suit the reality is that you'd also make decisions that would anger one side, and other decisions that would anger the other, and by the end you'd be treated with as much derision as you treat the people in zebra suits now.
