A new school for referees has been opened in Saint Petersburg

A new refereeing school in the name of Nikolai Puchkov has been opened in Saint Petersburg. The KHL's head of refereeing Vladimir Plyuschev had his take on the matter:

- Last year the question of the opening of this school arose after the KHL wanted to increase the standard of refereeing. In order to achieve this, new things are required. New referees should be well prepared for working, and in Moscow a new academy was opened before the announcement of this Nikolai Puchkov school. This school has already been in use for a long time, and experienced specialists work there. However, we now want this school to be useful for people who didn't make it as players but want to become a referee. They already have experience, know how to play the game, but they need experience working as a referee. Our academy is ready to accept anyone who is capable of refereeing at the needed level.There are documents in the office which can explain everything in detail. Of course, before entering the candidate should have some knowledge of the game, but it's not necessary to be an honoured Master of Sports. You need to understand hockey and be able to skate well.

After the training process has been completed, we will give the referees a chance to prove themselves. First of all they will work in the MHL or MHL-B, and then maybe they will get called up to the VHL. It's obvious, that it will be hard to get into the KHL straight away. Game practice is needed first. We want to create more competition among referees, so that more young people will do this job. It's like in any team, where the young players begin to replace the older ones. This year we have promoted twelve referees from the VHL, and so far they haven't made any serious mistakes.