The Wayne Gretzky–led Los Angeles Kings and Wendel Clark’s Leafs engaged in an epic playoff battle in late May 1993.
Courtesy of Graig Abel.
There was also some doubt at the time as to whether Gilmour was struck by the deflected puck or by Gretzky’s stick, to the point that the NHL offices cited the confusion as part of the league’s official explanation for why a penalty wasn’t called.
Replays of the incident — widely available on YouTube in raw video but also in many hilarious spoof formats — show Fraser feverishly consulting with his linesmen Kevin Collins and Ron Finn. Linesmen are allowed to call stick infractions, or at very least advise the referee that an offence had taken place.
Although admitting that it was a missed call all these years later, Fraser maintains that he never saw the infraction. There is one huge problem with his recollection: the replay clearly shows that he had an unobstructed view to the incident. Fraser never saw Gilmour being fouled because his head was turned toward the Leafs goal anticipating the puck arriving there. Gretzky and Gilmour were reacting to the puck being blocked before getting to the net but Fraser failed to pick up on it. To put that oversight into perspective, even Bob Cole, who has been missing broadcast calls in his own unique manner for the past thirty years, could see that the puck never made it to Potvin’s crease.
Fraser simply missed what at the very least should have been a minor penalty. That miss, combined with the official explanation from the NHL office, which was clearly at odds with the so-called following-through argument, burns the collective soul of Leafs Nation to this day.
Perhaps even more telling was the look on Gretzky’s face at the time. Like all superstar athletes, Gretzky had an understated swagger. When he was on the ice, his face rarely changed from that of a determined, singularly focused athlete. But the look on Gretzky’s face as Fraser and his two confederates deliberated was more like a worried schoolboy than a confident superstar. The only other expression that approached the one Gretzky wore for a brief moment that night came almost five years later when he was left on the bench during a shootout at the 1998 Winter Olympics as Canada lost to the Czech Republic.
During the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast of the game, analyst Harry Neale asked, “Wouldn’t this be something if Wayne Gretzky was thrown out for a high stick?” It would have been something all right, but Fraser made no call. And so it turned out to be nothing and Gretzky remained on the ice without so much as a minor penalty as Gilmour went to the Leafs dressing room to be stitched up.
With seconds left in that same Kings power play, the game’s greatest-ever player took a nice feed from Luc Robitaille and deposited the puck behind Potvin to win the game.
The Kings lived to fight another night and sent the series back to Toronto for the deciding Game 7. Two nights later Gretzky scored three more times to clinch the series for the Kings with another 5–4 win. Gretzky later called it the best game of his incomparable career.
For the Leafs, their best opportunity to win the Stanley Cup since 1967 swung, literally, on a missed call. And by a man who, for all his later regret, gave off an air of indifference, an unspoken “Do you really think that I, a man of such brilliance, could miss something so important?”
There are Leafs fans out there who, without a shred of evidence, claimed that this was all part of a big conspiracy perpetrated by the head office to deny a Leafs–Habs final, which would have run counter to their plans of expanding the game into sunnier climes. These fans, who are otherwise sensible human beings, swore that the “fix” was in that night — a claim that gathered some steam when Don Cherry hinted that he, too, believed something fishy had happened.
There are no shortage of Leafs fans, often perched on a bar stool and with the help of one too many drinks, who still feel the need to regale those around them with their theory that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman may have been involved. It’s enough to make 9/11 Truthers blush, and it’s all codswallop, of course, but it gives you a sense just how much the thought of Kerry Fraser still stings, even now, two decades later.
Wayne Gretzky and Doug Gilmour shake hands at the conclusion of the Kings’ victory in Game 7.
Courtesy of Graig Abel.
Though it was the most blatant example, that 1993 missed call by Kerry Fraser was not the only one that has cost the Leafs over the years. The next incident came late in the 2006–07 season, when the Leafs were battling the New York Islanders (and others) for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. That night Fraser inexplicably put himself in the midst of another season-defining incident.
Fraser was officiating the game, which took place on Long Island. In a play that Leafs Nations conspiracy theorists compare to the Gilmour incident almost fourteen years earlier, captain Mats Sundin scored what appeared to be a goal off a scramble in front of Isles goalie Rick DiPietro. Standing to the left of the Isles net, Fraser waved it off; Sundin, never one to argue just any call, protested this one profusely.
The scene would have been comical if it wasn’t so utterly infuriating. Sundin, almost a foot taller than Fraser, yanked out his mouthguard and passionately stated his case. Fraser didn’t budge.
The Leafs, it should be said, blew a two-goal lead and should have won even without the disputed goal. But had Sundin’s goal been allowed, it would have restored the Leafs two-goal cushion. Though there was no sure thing in that topsy-turvy season of 2006–07, especially with the unpredictable Andrew Raycroft in goal, Toronto very likely would have won the game had Sundin’s goal counted. Instead, New York tied it up during regulation time and the Isles’ Randy Robitaille scored the lone shootout goal to win it for his team.
The Leafs’ dropped point for losing in a shootout was bad enough. The two points that would have been denied to the Islanders had the Leafs been able to win in regulation time ended up being a killer. That’s because New York was able to mount a late-season charge bolstered by picking up Ryan Smyth at the trade deadline a week after the contentious Fraser-officiated game.
Six weeks and twenty-one games later, the Isles edged out the Leafs for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. The final margin? A single point.
Blessedly, Fraser was never much of a factor as far as the Leafs were concerned for the three seasons that remained of his NHL officiating career.
About two and a half years later, Fraser was playing out the string in what was his final season as an NHL official. The Leafs hosted the Buffalo Sabres on November 30, a Monday night.
The Leafs had been playing fairly decent hockey to that point. Phil Kessel, acquired in a training camp trade though he was recovering from surgery at the time, had been back for close to a month and was the catalyst for some improved play. In fact, the Leafs were riding a mini two-game win streak when the Sabres made the short trip up to Toronto.
The Leafs dominated in every category except for the score sheet as Sabres goalie Ryan Miller turned away thirty-eight shots in an eventual 3–0 shutout victory by Buffalo. Throughout the game, Fraser seemed almost a bit bored with it all.
By this point, Fraser’s head had been covered by a helmet for almost four full seasons.[1] Never one to let an opportunity slip by to remind Leafs fans who he was, he skated out at the start of the third period with his helmet in his hands. How we wished his head was still in it.
The sight was a perfect reminder of what we had been subjected to for all those years before he was forced to don a helmet. His hair was immaculate, the sheen of gel visible even to those in the 300 level. The mould of his head looked like someone had placed an old Butch Goring helmet and crazy-glued it to his cranium.
Fraser juggled his helmet in his hands — it looked as if he was doing it to the beat of the music playing — before donning his chapeau for the