Howdy,
So, got back out again this morning. This time with the guy that offered to coach me some. It was definitely nice working with him.
On positioning, one thing he said really helped me... Basically that I should be thinking like I'm a 3rd, really conservative, defenseman (2 ref system, btw). So I'm down at home base, then as the play transitions out of the zone, I follow the play up, staying even / slightly behind the defensive players. As we get into the offensive zone, then I stay on the neutral zone size of the line and wait for play to transition the other way. When it does, I try and stay even or slightly behind the defenseman again until I'm back down at home base.
It's not exactly that simple (I assume) since I may need to call zone exits in the offensive zone and zone entries into the defensive zone, but the concept helped me for sure.
Also worked on just dropping the puck. I probably spent five minutes throwing pucks at the ice after the game and just that extra bit of practice helped. I think as part of my warmup routine when I'm reffing I'm going to drop a few pucks just to try and get into that same groove.
Worked on signals some as well. The guy helping me is pretty particular on signals that aren't lazy or "happy" / "excited". I would say that when I play games I don't see refs that are that diligent about them, but its still good for me to learn.
Anyway... It was a good morning. ๐ I feel like I'm slowly learning some stuff and working on building my skill set. Hopefully as I get better I won't need to think so consciously about some of this stuff. ๐
Mark