The loneliest job in sports? Try this guy: His office is 3 feet by 3 feet by about 6 feet. He's a goal judge in hockey.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Chris Simon of the Lake Erie Monsters has the loneliest job in sports.
You think your Dilbert-like cubicle at work is cramped?
Simon's workspace is a 3-foot by 3-foot caged Plexiglas room. It's about 6 feet tall. It's like a phone booth, without a phone. A stubby stool is the only
furniture.
Simon is a goal judge who works the 40 home games the Monsters play at The Q. His job requires a single-minded determination: When there is a goal, he instantly pushes a hand-held buzzer to trigger a red light above his booth, which is positioned in the front row directly behind the net.
Imagine doing your job with rail lights flashing on both sides, people screaming and AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" blaring with extra bass.
Simon doesn't move.
In his small world, there can be no distractions. Not even for the sharpest and loudest sound at a hockey game, a noise you can appreciate only if you are close to the ice: The quick carom of a puck slamming off the Plexiglas. It happens repeatedly, and without warning. It's a booming, piercing shot – a violent knock – that would wake the dead.
Simon doesn't flinch.
He hunches forward, his right hand poised on the buzzer. His left hand rests on his left knee, and his concentration never wavers.
The way his job is structured, Simon is either perfect or a failure. He is definitely the former. And how many of us can say we are perfect for 800 nights of work? That's about how many games the 55-year-old has worked.
Simon learned his craft from his father, Phil, a longtime fixture on the Cleveland hockey scene who worked Barons games and who now works as a locker-room attendant. Often goal judges, like Chris, referee high-school or men's-league games. (On this particular night, he sported a bruised eye from a stick being wedged accidentally under his visor during a game he was officiating.)
Simon has worked as a goal judge since 1992. He spent a couple of years shadowing his father ("He's the one who taught me, 'Don't watch the play out there, watch what's in front.' ") He learned the sport playing on ponds behind Wickliffe High School. And while he is amazingly single-minded at Monsters games, he multitasks away from the arena. He owns a beverage store, drives a school bus and referees games.
View full sizeChris Simon grips the buzzer he has to depress on goals. He has to be fast - and accurate. Controversies come up on rare occasion. Once, he says, there was a questionable call during a playoff game in the 1990s. Fans gave him the business as he walked out, but the next day film showed he was correct in his goal call.
Simon's biggest challenge is a tight net. A puck can ricochet out instantly, making it difficult to tell whether it was a deflection or a goal, he says. And his vision gets screened occasionally – not by players but by referees. It's all part of a day at the office, so to speak.
On a recent night at The Q, Simon's counterpart is Tom Cowley at the opposite goal. They are part of a support-staff team that ensures a game runs smoothly.
Team effort
A hockey game actually requires three teams – two competing on the ice and one working off it. That's where Barb Krepop comes in.
The supervisor of off-ice officials, Krepop has been a hockey fixture in Cleveland through the game's many incarnations since 1973: the Crusaders, the Barons, the Lumberjacks and now the Monsters. Technically, she works for the American Hockey League.
Officials cannot wear team logos – "all our decisions have to be neutral," she says – and she must file a nightly report that could have a direct influence on teams and players. A team warming up doesn't leave the ice in a timely manner before the game? A fine is possible. A player decides not to skate out to acknowledge the crowd when he is named one of the game's stars? Potential fine.
Krepop doesn't look the part of a stern taskmaster. She wears a colorful red holiday sweater as she coordinates her staff. Her main job, she says, is ensuring every position is covered: two goal judges, two penalty-box attendants (who by league rules cannot talk to the media and who also are in charge of pucks), a clock operator, a penalty-time keeper and three statisticians (one who records shots, and two who keep track of the important plus-minus figure, which tracks players' efficiency).
She is the master statistician. The game report she compiles is sent immediately to the Massachusetts-based American Hockey League office – and it goes online instantly.
"The least favorite part" of my job, she says, "is I don't get a chance to watch the game."
While the NHL uses cameras to record goals, the AHL does it the old-fashioned way: It sticks a guy directly behind the goal and has him watch – intently.
"When there is a goal scored," Krepop says, "there is an urgency."
There also is a sense of importance to official record-keeping. A "referee can decide who gets the goal or assist, but we can override them," says Krepop, who probably has worked about 1,600 games.
View full sizeBarb Krepop, supervisor of off-ice officials. The crew has a short but mandatory pregame meeting with officials to go over key information – such as the rule that the puck has to be entirely across the line for a goal to be recorded. Most of the time, things work as efficiently as players passing the puck on a power play.
Most of the time.
Simon chuckles. "I've had a few instances," he says. "Once, there was a lady who had a little too much to drink and wanted to get in the box with me." (She didn't.)
Total concentration
During a game, Simon is in his own world. A period is 20 minutes, but in real time with stoppages it's around 40. Three timeouts in a period are his only chances for a break, if you can call it that. There is no chatter or going for a walk; Simon only can sit and stare as a goalie sweeps away ice chips from the crease.
The goal judge's demeanor never changes.
Referees can override Simon on a call, though he proudly admits he is "two for two" this year in challenges.
In the old Richfield Coliseum, the goal light would stay on for seven seconds, he says. If you hit the buzzer prematurely the time would seem a lot longer. "You didn't want to make a mistake there," he says.
One time, fans went crazy after an overtime victory at the arena in Richfield. "They started shaking my box," Simon says. "They weren't going to do me any harm, but it was kind of freaky."
At the 8:47 mark of the first period of a recent Toronto-Lake Erie game that saw more than 50 shots fired at the nets, a Marlie slams the puck hard toward Monsters goaltender Calvin Pickard, who made a gut save. Pickard has to turn around to see if it got through; Simon doesn't budge. He never hits the buzzer. No goal.
With seven minutes remaining in the first period, two players drop the gloves. As they trade punches in an old-fashioned slugfest, the crowd screams for blood. But Simon doesn't move. He shows as much emotion as Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in "The Terminator."
He remains a transfixed robot, even when players slam the Plexiglas inches from him. Simon's only movement in the first period is to punch the buzzer, which he does after a slapshot with 59 seconds remaining. He triggers the light above him in almost as much time as it takes the puck to hit the back of the net. Well, almost.
As soon as the horn sounds to end a period, he becomes his personable self.
He has a cut and dry job, with a single, simple task.
"It's goal or no goal," he says. "That's it."
