eminar instructors, trained and certified in USA Hockey’s hallowed Colorado halls, are told to teach the Level I seminar by walking new officials through the Basic manual. Level II candidates get a tour of the Intermediate manual, and Level IIIs get a blow-by-blow of the .... If you guessed "Advanced," you win the prize. See point three below. 

That’s perfect for first-year officials and adequate for sophomores. It might even work for first-year Level IIIs. But the Level III seminar fills with officials who sit through that seminar year upon year, rehashing the same information. Instructors are volunteers; good officials who have enough personality to stand up and listen to themselves talk for awhile. Unfortunately, few happen to be professional teachers or speakers — they’re good-hearted, unpaid hockey referees doing their part to ensure everyone’s re-certification. But had USA Hockey put us through this in early 14th-century Italy, Dante would have discovered an eighth level of Hell.

The seminar is an all-day ordeal, broken only by lunch and an hour of ice time that’s used to repeat the same old drills everyone’s done a few hundred times.

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