Select Illinois high school hockey games played this season and next will feature a test pilot program, approved by USA Hockey, that will no doubt startle some coaches, players and fans. These games will have two referees, each wearing their orange armbands, plus one linesperson.

 AHAI will oversee the test pilot and IHOA will facilitate the program on behalf of AHAI, which was approved by USA Hockey in June. IHOA has been in discussions with USA Hockey about using the 2-1 system for 18 months.

The 2-1 system is the least common of the on-ice official systems and has often been dubbed the modified three-man, which was commonplace for decades in Illinois high school hockey.

For the past several years, Illinois has struggled to fill weekend high school games with qualified on-ice officials, especially with many high school games played with the four-official system (two referees and two linesperson). Due to limited officials, some games in recent years were played with simply two officials, and many were cancelled due to no available officials.

About 250 high school games were cancelled or reduced from four officials to two officials last season by IHOA, so IHOA administrators running the test pilot program are hoping to work about 250 games this season with this new 2-and-1 system.

“We are inundated (on weekends) with high school hockey games, thus we are not able to have our top local officials working those games, when many instead are officiating NCAA, other college leagues, pro leagues or simply AAA games,” said Brad Baumruck, the Illinois referee-in-chief who is one of several veteran officials who has been pushing for the 2-and-1 system “to help alleviate having referees on games they should not be working, are not qualified to work.”

The 2-and-1 system will only be run in select varsity games, with prior approval of AHAI Assigner and the IHOA referee-in-chief. All games run with the 2-and-1 will be played in September, October, November and December – and test pilot games will be played in all four leagues (Scholastic, North-Central, West and Catholic).

All high-profile (Rivalry) high school games, such as New Trier Green versus Loyola Gold, Glenbrook North versus Glenbrook South and others, will still have the four-official system.

About 100 Illinois officials have been selected to participate in the test pilot program and there are about 75 Illinois officials with past 2-and-1 on-ice experience, such as Brett Straley, Brian Fisher, Jack Raslawski, Joe Prescott, John Dunne and Samantha Cebulski, among others. All officials must attend one of three mandatory zoom training sessions for two-hours to participate in this program, and all will be trained as both a referee and a linesperson.

All officials in the test program will be pre-assigned their on-ice position (referee or linesperson) and all are required to fill out a survey after each game is completed; the survey must be completed to be paid for the game.

Additional training will be provided each month during the test pilot phase. “We anticipate this taking no more than 90 minutes,” Baumruck said.

Additional training will be offered using various methods, such as YouTube videos, PowerPoint and zoom sessions. USA Hockey will be updated every month by IHOA on the test pilot program.

A few notes about the 2-and-1 system to consider:

• All faceoffs will be handled by the linesperson with regards to dropping of the puck.
• There will be times when both referees are on the same side of the ice.
• The referee closest to the bench will perform the line-change procedure.
• During an icing call, the middle official be it the linesperson or referee, shall signal icing at a 45-degree angle.The system is designed to have 95 percent of the icings completed by the linesperson to create a more consistent icing standard.
• During a scrum in front of the goal, the linesperson and trail referee will be responsible to get in among the players as quickly as possible. The lead referee is responsible for infractions occurring while his partner is involved with altercation as well as getting players back to the benches and identifying if someone comes off the bench.
• Both referees may call penalties.
• The linesperson will be responsible for 95 percent of play entering an offensive zone the first time; the back referee will overtake the blueline once play has been established in the endzone.
• When one team is being penalized, the linesperson will escort the player to the penalty box and the referee not calling the penalty will watch for any potential problems and retrieve the puck for the linesperson.
• If there is an altercation between two players, the trail referee involved in breaking up the situation is responsible for escorting one of the players.
• The two-referee, one-linesperson system was used in the NHL prior to World War II.