I don't care what you say – well, actually, I do – but the toughest job in big-league hockey is refereeing.
And, I don't care what you say – well, actually, I do again – but the greatest referee in NHL history almost was a Ranger.
A native New Yorker, no less, Bill Chadwick originally starred for the Jamaica High School hockey team. Then, he graduated to the old Met League, which featured games at old Madison Square Garden on Sunday afternoons.
He soon moved up to the Blueshirts' farm team, the Rovers, which meant that he was one skate away from making the Rangers in the late 1930's-early 1940's.
But Chadwick took a puck in the eye in a Met League game, and – as a result – permanently had only one useful optic
When he nearly lost total vision via another hockey mishap, Bill had no choice but to forsake a player career; which meant that the Rangers lost a good prospect.
Instead, he took to officiating and moved from the Eastern Amateur Hockey League (Rovers' level) to the NHL. And this, mind you, with only one good eye.
"Bill was one of the best," said Rangers coach and general manager Frank Boucher. "It was amazing what he accomplished with vision out of only one eye."
Not only that but Chadwick also invented the officiating penalty signals we now take for granted and was so good at his job that Bill – alias The Big Whistle – reffed more playoff Game Sevens and Final Rounds than any other Zebra of his era.
Bill later became a popular radio and TV analyst for Rangers games. His repartee with Hall of Fame defenseman and later referee King Clancy were classics.
The beauty part of Chadwick was his ability to laugh at himself and the fact that he had only one good eye.
Chadwick: "When angry fans used to yell at me, 'Chadwick, you're blind,' I'd say to myself, 'Well, the guy is half right!'"
