I will start by saying that I am biased towards the officials as I have been one for near 20 years.
I think that if there is something that replay has showed us is how often officials are correct on close calls. My main concern with removing officials from the ice is losing the communication factor. Everyone in this thread has a different idea of what certain penalties are as they are up for interpretation. Most are a grey area. But the way to avoid the grey and keep the flow of the game is to have someone talking to a player as they are upset when they feel they have been fouled upon.
If you were to have refs off the ice and treat it like rugby where you call the penalty after the whistle, then you best have some blatant way of calling penalties on delay to try and prevent retaliatory penalties or melees.
You will start to see more and more technology introduced into the game to provide assistance to the refs, but with how the rules are written and whether there is a person on the ice or in the press level, the human element will remain due to the grey area.
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