[Flames Fan, Ph.D.]

Everyone has preferences. Most in positions of arbitration or decision making in sports will pretend that they don't, but of course they do. They even implicitly admit it in the Sportsnet article where they acknowledge the phenomenon that the first person speaking loudly can sway opinions.

My policy preference for reviews would be:

- you have a team of 5 who adjudicate the review calls in isolation and submit their ruling anonymously.

- to overturn a call on the ice, 4/5 have to rule in favour of overturn so that you meet a standard for concluding the initial decision to be in error.

- I'd also be in favour of a time clock to limit review for the adjudicators - can't decide within 3 or 5 minutes time? Call on ice stands.

- I'd also encourage/set a minimum for hiring people who don't have a professional background in hockey; if your rules are so clear, then a third party should have little problem in coming to reasonable decisions.

Edit:

On the topic of league bias, I'd submit it's more just unconscious stuff going on. These are long time hockey people, so of course they have preferences. But since the system is opaque and clearly muddled, people fill in the blanks with malice since there is no clear accountability from the league outside of issuing tautologies around their rulings (the puck was deemed to be kicked in because it was kicked in). Putting in a transparent system where you display the outcome of the ruling (for example, tweet out that 4 of 5 reviewers said overturn) would at least give people some procedural stability.