Would you say International Hockey has the most biased Officiating?

[Yakushev72]

You are right about his nationality, he is generally referred to as German in Canada and I assumed East, based on his clear support of the Soviet hockey team. That's my mistake. He was horrendous in his first game in the series, and despite agreeing that he wouldn't be back the Soviets selected him to referee the final game, where he continued his poor work. Was he inherently biased? Probably not, but he certainly did a terrible job, and the Soviets were beneficiaries of his ineptitude. In the name of fairness, the Canadian team also benefited from the style/incompetence of the American refs in the initial four games of the series in a similar fashion, but no one approached the level of Kompalla. The official that Parise nearly swung at is Kompalla.

I agree with much of what you say, but the issue here is bias, not competence. Competence is a subjective term, unless there are clear-cut methods of determining who is and is not competent. I agreed earlier that the European official of the 1970's was relatively inexperienced in working fast-paced, physical games, but I don't believe that there is any real gap in competence or experience today. Basic competence is all that is needed.

I don't see any justification for having officials from one of the participating countries reffing games involving their compatriots based on some blanket charge of "incompetence" of neutral country officials. In order to make the international system work, there must be neutral country officials working all of the games, and the participating countries must back up the refs, even if they don't agree with every call that is made. In the upcoming World Cup, the officiating will be immediately suspect, because you will have American and Canadian officials working all of the games involving their countrymen. That's alright for the World Cup, but not for the Olympics or the WC's.