Ice hockey referee legend Josef "Jupp" Kompalla dies at age 90

Career highlight: Summit Series

His assignment at the decisive eighth game of the 1972 "Summit Series" between the USSR and Canada in Moscow is considered the highlight of his career. This game brought to a close one of the most legendary series in ice hockey history, in which Canadian professionals faced the Soviet national team for the first time. According to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Kompalla officiated the groundbreaking game as head referee, although other sources date the highlight to the year 1992.

For his services to German ice hockey, Kompalla was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit in 1992. Around ten years later, in 2003, he was inducted as only the ninth German at that time into the "Hall of Fame" of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). Until recently, Kompalla lived in Krefeld, where he had also spent the bulk of his sporting career.

Honors and tributes

The German Ice Hockey Federation (DEB) and the Deutsche Eishockey Liga confirmed Kompalla's death. "Die deutsche Eishockey-Familie verliert mit Jupp einen ihrer ganz Großen," says Gernot Tripcke, CEO of the DEL. The news of the death of the referee legend prompted numerous reactions from the ice hockey community on Sunday evening, in which his decades of work were honored.

Kompalla had shaped German ice hockey across generations, it was said from within the DEB's circles. His name is inseparably linked with the development of refereeing in German professional ice hockey. In the international context as well, he was regarded as a respected personality who officiated numerous top-level matches at the highest level.

His death comes amid a period of upheaval in German ice hockey, in which federations and the league are working on structural reforms. The loss of such a figure of identification weighs particularly heavily in the assessment of observers, as Kompalla was regarded as a link between the eras of German ice hockey.