From Adrian College to the American Hockey League: Former Bulldog Ted Anstett Skates His Way to the

There was a familiar name on the back of one of the jerseys skating around the ice on Sunday evening at Arrington Ice Arena, but that name wasn’t on the back of a player’s jersey, but the referee.

If you would have been at a Men's ACHA D1 game in Adrian three years ago, you probably would've seen the same name on the back of a jersey, but chances are Ted Anstett would've been on the receiving end of the penalty rather than the one blowing the whistle.

Every Sunday night, you'd see Anstett on the ice again, reffing the Adrian Over Thirty Hockey Association (AOTHA) games each week and sometimes in the Summer League as well, a side job he said he picked up his sophomore year to make some money on the side.

He almost didn't come to Adrian, he tells me in the now empty Arrington Ice Arena Monday morning, he planned on not going to school when he finished his junior career with the Waterloo Siskins of the GOJHL and just going into officiating from there. But when the opportunity arose to play for the Bulldogs, the team his older brother played for for four years, he took it, and then he took the job officiating in the AOTHA.

Going into his senior year, Anstett was an "official" official, getting his level one certification from USA Hockey and officiating youth hockey games Saturday and Sunday mornings before getting ready for his own games or catching the bus to an away game.

After talking to officials who were working his own games, like Nick Huff who's a mainstay at Adrian College Hockey games, he said it evolved from there and took off. After graduating with his Bachelor's in Business Administration-Sport Management and playing his final season of hockey with the ACHA Men's D1 team, he began officiating in the NA3HL and NAHL games part time as a referee and linesman. That summer before the season started, he says he attended USA Hockey's Official Development (ODP) camp in Buffalo, NY.

January of 2017 was when he began officiating full time in the NA3HL, NAHL and in the ACHA while he was working his way to his Master of Science in Arts in Sports Administration and Leadership. By 2018-19, his first year out of graduate school, he was officiating full time in the NA3HL and NAHL and was hired into the United States Hockey League, the only tier one junior league in the United States.

In summer of 2019, he went back to the USA Hockey ODP camp in Buffalo and then to the NHL Exposure Combine where he had the opportunity to officiate the Buffalo Sabres Rookie Tournament, where games included the hometown Sabres, the Boston Bruins, Pittsburgh Penguins and New Jersey Devils. After the tournament, he was hired into the American Hockey League (AHL) as an official.

Last week, Anstett officiated his first AHL game on September 27th and 28th, the former being a matchup between the San Jose Barracudas and the Colorado Eagles and the latter between the Stockton Heat and Bakersfield Condors. In the next few weeks, he’ll be reffing games featuring the Rockford Ice Hogs, Tucson Road Runners, Milwaukee Admirals, Chicago Wolves and the Iowa Wild. He says his goal is the have a schedule that’s 100% AHL games and that the ultimate goal or dream is to become a regular NHL referee.

Like I said before, chances were that if you were in the stands when Anstett was a Bulldog, he would have been on the receiving end of a penalty, after all, he did finish ninth all time in penalty minutes in a career with 177 in 107 games and he more than likely deserved a few more than he got. But his style of play, he says, give him an advantage and is one of his strengths when it comes to officiating. Nobody knows how to watch for a sneaky behind the play hack or whack better than a guy who was a master of those sneaky plays himself and a former agitator like Anstett knows how to read the game and know when he needs to calm things down or just “let the boys go”, as they say. He also says that another one of his strengths is communicating with the players and calming them down in heated situations because he knows well how to communicate with them, after all, it wasn’t that long ago that he was a player himself.

As far as the transition from player to referee goes, he says it’s been easy because there’s still an adrenaline rush that comes with skating at that high of a level and you still have to make crucial calls at crucial times, similar to making plays. And his 107 games with the ACHA D1 team helped too, a team he says runs like a well oiled machine and always has.

Even now, two seasons after becoming a legitimate official, working games in junior leagues and now officiating at nearly the highest level of hockey and no longer reffing Sunday night AOTHA hockey games, he says he’ll never forget where he got his start in Adrian. Or how he was almost frightened to call a penalty in men’s league the first few times. It would certainly be daunting, no matter who you are, calling a penalty that causes a reaction to literally everyone on the ice and bench. He means it too, the never forgetting where he got his start, he came around to chat with some of the guys in the league last night after working the ACHA Men’s and Women’s D2 games earlier in the day.

So what was someone who’s reffing nearly the highest level of hockey doing reffing a couple of ACHA hockey games on a Sunday afternoon? That was definitely my first question when I saw him after the games ended Sunday evening. He’d been working a USHL game in Youngstown earlier in the weekend, he said, and got a call from one of the regular officials at Adrian games who asked him if he wanted two games on a Sunday in Adrian. His response? Of course, that he’d take any chance to come back to Adrian for a couple of games.

It’s funny how it all works out, no matter how far some of these Adrian hockey alumni go, they always find their way back to Adrian. And as Anstett said “You come for the hockey and leave with the school.”