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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.

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 final period.

Fraser was scarcely heard of again as far as the Leafs were concerned, working his final game at the ACC the following April without so much as a peep in the way of official recognition. Not recognizing a long-serving official in his final game in a marquee building was a rarity, but in this case it was completely the right thing, given the anger Fraser still elicits.

But, for me, there was one final indignity. Eleven months later, the Leafs were playing a road game in Philadelphia on October 23, 2010, a Saturday night. The Leafs’ 4–0 start that fall had come crashing down, and they were never really in the game against the Flyers, eventually losing 5–2, their third consecutive setback. With Mrs. Robinson and the kiddies safely tucked in to bed, I’d gone downtown to meet a friend. The scene around Front Street was clearly missing the remnants of the hockey crowd that typically added some spice to the atmosphere.

As I had some time to kill as I waited for my friend, I decide to head up to Fionn MacCools, an Irish bar across the street from the Rogers Centre, to watch the late game on Hockey Night. As I walked along an unusually quiet street — had it been a typical Leafs Saturday night tilt the hockey hordes would have been cramming the sidewalks — I saw a solitary poster that cried out to be read. It was just north of the intersection of Blue Jays Way and Front Street and had been placed across a temporary wall that guarded a building site despite it being clearly marked “Post No Bills.”

As I got closer, I saw it was an advert for Fraser’s upcoming book signing. Now retired, Fraser had written Final Call about his time in the NHL. It turned out that a meet-and-greet and book signing with Fraser had just taken place, about two hundred metres up the street. At Wayne Gretzky’s restaurant. How fitting.