Rod Brind'Amour sounds off on the NHL's officiating problem.

It seems like each and every season there are more and more complaints about how the National Hockey League officiates it's games. An apparent lack of consistency from one official to the other, as well as between the regular season and the playoffs, often make it an exercise in frustration for fans, players, and even coaches.

Perhaps no coach is better known for his disputes with NHL officials than Carolina Hurricanes bench boss Rod Brind'Amour. The fiery Brind'Amour has never been shy to let the officials know when he feels they have blown a call, or missed one entirely, but that doesn't mean he thinks they are bad at their jobs. In fact quite the opposite.

Recently Brind'Amour revealed that he does not believe that the officials on the ice can be reliably expected to make the correct calls given the speed at which the game moves in the modern era.

"These guys are the best at what they do," admitted Brind'Amour. "There's zero chance anyone could do what they are doing, you could throw 10 refs out there and they are not gonna get it right because it happens too fast."

In fact Brind'Amour seemed to sympathize with the officials when it comes to all the criticism they receive from fans who have the benefit of instant replay.

"And yet they've done this technology thing and they've stuck it where we get the view within 5 seconds," said Brind'Amour. "And the whole building, and the whole people at home, and they stick on the bench and now we can tell if they mess this up."

The officials of course don't get the benefit of using those same replays to make those calls, something that Brind'Amour feels should change. While the subject of using video replay to judge penalties is a controversial one to be sure, Brind'Amour argues that short T.V. timeouts could be used during these reviews as opposed to the longer commercial breaks that traditionally occur during an NHL period.

"You take two of the officials off the ice, you don't need 4 on the ice," stated a confident Brind'Amour. "You have two guys in the box on review, everytime there's a penalty the one guy is already checking to see if that was the right call."

Brind'Amour argues that these short commercial breaks would also preserve the flow of the game, whereas he feels the normal commercial breaks are too long for the live audience.

"Guess what? At that 13 minute marker we've had 3 penalties? Now we're not taking a 3 minute stoppage in play which sucks the life out of the building," stated Brind'Amour.

Brind'Amour acknowledges that the major flaw in this system is that it wouldn't address missed calls by the officials on the ice as there would be no opportunity to review, but you've got to start somewhere.

These answers from Brind'Amour were part of a longer interview which you can check out in full in the video below: