Typically, with the out-spoken Roenick, he can be right and he can be wrong all in the same breath.

To recap, Roenick was upset with referee Blaine Angus after Angus failed to detect an obvious high-sticking penalty against the Buffalo Sabres' defenceman Rory Fitzpatrick that left Roenick bleeding badly from the mouth in the third period of a 6-2 Flyer loss.

Roenick screamed his displeasure at Angus over the non-call from the players' bench and then fired a water bottle across the rink that skipped once and clipped the referee just above the skates. For that, Roenick received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, plus a gross misconduct.

Afterwards, in the dressing room, the anger and frustration just leaked out of Roenick.

"Third period, I'm in on a breakaway and the kid's stick comes up and hits me in right in the face. Blaine Angus is standing just right in front of me. He says he doesn't see it. I mean, what the hell is he looking at? They have to take responsibility for the way they referee. The National Hockey League has to step in and tell these guys to open up their (expletive) eyes. I mean, Blaine Angus, standing right in front of me, I have the puck, he says he doesn't see it. How does he not see it? How does he not see blood dripping all over my face, all over my jersey? Terrible. Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely terrible. And that's not the reason we lost by the way. It has nothing to do with the referees. But when things are going south, things are magnified. And Blaine Angus did an absolutely terrible job of refereeing the hockey game."

Roenick continued to pour it on. After being told that coach Ken Hitchcock described the loss as embarrassing, Roenick said: "I mean, what's embarrassing? Getting stuck in the face? I mean, look at me. It's ridiculous. It's a joke. Wake up. NHL, wake up. Have the referees responsible for their actions too."

Sounds good, in theory, and indeed, NHL referees are responsible for their actions too - subject to fines, weekly reviews, and occasionally, dismissals if their work is deemed to be consistently erratic.

The problem with Roenick's reasoning is that he was equally guilty of a similar oversight earlier in the game after teammate Sami Kapanen accidentally highsticked him in the mouth.

Roenick complained bitterly about the lack of a penalty call that time too - or until referee Dan Marouelli correctly pointed out that the errant stick came from a fellow Flyers' player and thus was not subject to a penalty.

Roenick apologized for the case of mistaken identity, but that didn't took nothing away from the underlying irony.

Here was Roenick himself, complaining about a missed call, only two periods after he himself failed to detect who sliced him open in the first place. Even though he was on the ice, in the middle of the play, Roenick couldn't tell where the stick came from, or whose stick it was, or whether it was came up intentionally, until someone told him later on.

Clearly, the game is being played at such a high speed that too often, even if a referee looks perfectly positioned to make a call, all it takes is for a player to shift this way or turn that way and suddenly, the official no longer has a clear view of the play anymore, but has to peer through bodies and sticks to assess a play that unfolded in the blink of an eye. It's a difficult and some would say impossible job.

Officiating remains such an ongoing lightning rod for discontent among so many stakeholders - from players and coaches to managers and fans - that perhaps the time has come for a radical shift in how the game is refereed at the NHL level.

The theory of the two-referee system was to focus a second set of eyes on the ice and try to catch infractions that happened behind the play, as the single referee was racing up the ice, trying to stay on top of the puck.

Depending upon your perspective, the two-referee system is either a work in progress (official NHL position) or an unmitigated disaster (everybody else's position).

So why not tweak the system, putting the second referee in the press box, on a headset, and ask him to stay in constant contact with the remaining official on the ice? If the second referee had been in the press box Tuesday night in Buffalo, he could have radioed down to Angus and explained what happened on the play. Angus could then have called a penalty against Fitzpatrick, Roenick would have been mollified and what ultimately turned into a nasty, unnecessary outburst, could have been defused almost right away.