Just before the puck drop, I ran into no less a figure than Gary Bettman as I was about to ascend the Gardens escalators to my assigned seat. I had just read a fairly positive review in The Hockey News that day about Bettman’s first hundred days on the job as NHL commissioner. Like the review, I believed that Bettman had done a good job, and, giddy in the excitement of the moment, I shook his hand and congratulated him. Bettman sheepishly thanked me but looked as if he thought I was not in complete control of all my mental faculties (I swear, I was). To this day, my friends, a few of whom are conspiracy types who believe Bettman is somehow out to get Canadian hockey fans, won’t let me forget doing it.
The game is both a blur and an event where even marginal details remain burned into my mind. Both men are no longer with us, but I can still see the mullets of Leafs coach Pat Burns and Peter Zezel swaying in the wind as though they are both very much alive. Even less glamorous Leafs such as Mike Krushelnyski are embedded in my brain. That same guy beside me — the Osborne fan — had hung the unofficial nickname of “Casual Cruiser” on Krushelnyski in some sort of backhanded nod to his effortless skating ability. And it was true: Krushelnyski’s cruising up and down his wing is one of the details that a setting such as the Gardens framed so perfectly. I saw Krushelnyski play in an NHL old-timers game in Barrie almost two decades later, and I instantly recognized that fluid stride the moment I saw it — it hadn’t changed a bit since he played at the Gardens that night, even if the man himself was older and greyer.
If the same game took place at Air Canada Centre, or any of the other leading arenas of the present-day NHL, it wouldn’t have matched the atmosphere that night in the Gardens. I was sitting in one of the last rows of the building and it was as if I could reach out and touch Glenn Anderson when he swatted in the winning goal out of mid-air. The dome almost flew off the Gardens. With nowhere for the sound to go but bounce right back at you, the noise was paralyzing and liberating all at the same time. The Leafs had one step to go before a dream Stanley Cup final with the Montreal Canadiens. The air around the Gardens that night was so thick with excitement, you could taste it. But a guy in zebra stripes with bad hair poured hemlock into the Leafs cup of dreams. The bitter aftertaste still stings.
4
Kerry Fraser
Referees.
They are often cited as having the most difficult and thankless job in all of sports. That said, there are times, however rare, when a ref wholeheartedly earns the scorn heaped on them by fans, players, and media alike.
If you follow or play hockey long enough, you’ll start to notice the offending individual in many ways — the mannerisms, the way he skates, the way he waves off calls. Depending how much hockey you played as a youngster and how high a level you managed to make it to once you got a little older, you picked up on these annoying ref-isms more as you went along.
It first hit me how grating certain refs could be when I was playing AAA rep hockey as a kid. A few just seemed to have a sense of superiority about them when they entered the arena. Aside from teenagers or early-twenties types who toil as minor-hockey refs, or others who handle rec league games for pocket money, most zebras, if they were honest with themselves, would admit they’d rather be playing the game than calling it. Seriously, would you rather play in the National Hockey League, or be one of the guys who are noticed only if he makes a mistake?
And there’s the rub. It really takes guts to skate around knowing full well that virtually every time you blow the whistle half the people on the ice will be annoyed, the other half asking “What took you so long?”
If you were around in the 1980s, you’ll recall the styles of the day called for a lot of hair. And although the fashion crossed ages and classes, nowhere was it more consistently and slavishly followed than in hockey and all its subcultures.
“Hockey mullets” survive as one of the most entertaining Google searches at work that won’t get you fired.
Along with shorter hair, much has changed over the years relating to how games are called in the NHL. The biggest change has been the addition of a second referee. But a strong personality and a healthy dose of self-belief remain key prerequisites for managing all the competing forces and personalities on the ice.
Let’s be honest, it takes stones the size of billiard balls to tell a raving John Tortorella that he has it all wrong. It takes even bigger ones to make a split-second call that you know may turn the tide of a game. Skate a mile in a ref’s skates and you would very quickly understand how difficult a job they have. Still, there is always a niggling sense that a few refs are just a little too smart, not unlike the uniformed police officer who develops that strange habit of always taking a stroll at your local pub when most of his brethren can’t be bothered.
And then there is Kerry Fraser. Fraser has never had a shortage of self-belief and he apparently missed the memo that hairstyles from the 1980s are no longer de rigueur. And if there is one man who makes the collective blood of Leafs fans boil, it is undeniably Fraser.
Let’s start with the hair. Mullets were bad enough but perfectly explainable. It wasn’t just hockey players — everybody from schoolboys to actors had them way back when they were fashionable. But Kerry Fraser lives in a world where bouffants are perpetually cool. According to the Oxford Dictionary, bouffant means “puffed out” — kind of a mullet on steroids, in other words. Marie Antoinette is credited with inventing the hairstyle when she was the French queen; her bouffant died, of course, along with the rest of her when her head became dislodged. If Leafs fans had their way, the punishment inflicted upon Fraser for the events of May 27, 1993, would make the guillotine look dignified by comparison.
It was Game 6 of the Campbell Conference Final and the Leafs had a 3–2 lead in their best-of-seven series after their overtime exploits two days earlier. One more Leafs victory was all it would take to set up a dream Stanley Cup Final between Toronto and the Montreal Canadiens.
Kerry Fraser was one of the NHL’s most respected officials, and he now dabbles in media commentary. Leafs fans will never forget his gaffe in Game 5 of the 1993 Campbell Conference Final, however. The perfectly manicured hair only added to the angst.
Courtesy of Graig Abel.
Playing in Los Angeles, the Leafs’ Wendel Clark had completed a hat trick, scoring late to tie the game 4–4 and forcing overtime. With the Leafs’ Glenn Anderson having drawn a penalty late in regulation, they took to the ice knowing they had to kill off the Kings power play to prevent the series returning to Toronto for a Game 7.
Wayne Gretzky, largely an inert presence to that point in the game, was starting to find his mojo. Both Gretzky and the Leafs captain, Doug Gilmour, were on the ice when Gretzky attempted to shoot the puck toward the Toronto goal. The shot was blocked before it reached goaltender Felix Potvin, and Gretzky and Gilmour reacted instinctively, heading toward the deflected puck.
Gretzky missed the puck and clipped Gilmour on the chin. Gilmour went down in a heap, bleeding, and play was whistled dead. No one doubted the hit was unintentional but it was equally beyond doubt that Gilmour was fouled, perhaps grievously so given the blood pouring from his chin.
The television footage shows Fraser, who would normally drink in the thick air of the spotlight on such occasions, looking like a child scared out of his wits. He later claimed that he had asked Gilmour what happened and that the Leafs captain had told him Gretzky had clipped him on the “follow-through.” It was a critical distinction because in the early 1990s, like now, hitting an opposing player while “following through” shooting the puck was not normally a penalty.