Candidates for election as Honoured Members in the referee or linesman category shall be chosen on the basis of their officiating ability, sportsmanship, character and their contribution to the game of hockey in general.
The next candidate I will make a case for to be electd to the Hockey Hall of Fame is retired referee Kerry Fraser. Officials are hard to make a case for because there are not many tangible aspects to their career that fans can see. The main thing with an official is their consistency and fairness. Those are things that are not flashy or noteworthy on a highlight package, which is the marksman of a good official.
Kerry Fraser began his career as an on-ice official at the early age of 15 as a referee of a Industrial Hockey League. However, like many other children in Canada by playing minor hockey. He came to the realization that he could not make a career of being a hockey player after attempting to hit Hall of Famer Mark Howe. Here is Fraser’s account of the situation
”During one game we played against his team, in my final season of Jr. A hockey, I gave Mark the hardest open-ice check that I possibly could. You never want to let another player see if you're hurt, but my insides shook after I checked him. That hit let me know that I needed to look for another type of work.”
After a recommendation by family friend, veteran minor league coach Ted Garvin, he attended the Haliburton Referee School in 1972. During that year the new World Hockey Association came into being thus adding more opportunities for Kerry and others to make it to the top levels of professional hockey. During one of his final examinations in that camp, Hall of Fame referee Frank Udvari, took notice. At the time Udvari was the assistant to “referee-in-chief” of the NHL, Ian “Scotty” Morrison. Udvari offered Fraser a tryout at the NHL Referees Training Camp on the condition that he get a haircut.
After the training camp, Kerry Fraser was assigned to work with another Hall of Fame official, linesman Neil Armstrong, the father of St. Louis Blues’ GM Doug Armstrong, for the 1972-73 pre-season after which he was placed in the AHL as a part-time referee to work on his craft. The next season he was offered his first NHL contract to be a minor-league referee. He was assigned to work the WCHL (now the WHL) and the Midwest Junior Hockey League. After continuing to develop his craft in the minor leagues, Fraser was eventually promoted to the NHL in the 1980-81 season.
In the NHL, Fraser was considered to be one of the most consistent referees of all time. Like any official however, some of his calls resulted in controversy. The most famous of these came in Game 6 of the 1993 Campbell Conference Finals between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Los Angeles Kings. For those who don’t know, with the series 3-2 in favour of the Maple Leafs, the Kings’ Wayne Gretzky high-sticked the Leafs’ Doug Gilmour in overtime but there was no call on the play by Fraser. Later Gretzky scored the game winning goal, sending it to a seventh game in which the Los Angeles Kings won on the back of a Wayne Gretzky hat trick. The missed call against Gretzky in Game 6 has drawn the ire of Leaf fans to this day.
From Fraser’s book he describes the situation like this, which hopefully should appease Leaf fans:
”As a referee, the Biggest fear I’ve always had is that when I blink, something could occur in that fraction of a second that I will miss. It’s also uncomfortable when a player simply passes in front of your line of vision--you worry something fateful might occur.
“Was this one such moment? There was an aching in the pit of my gut, a feeling of helplessness, a sensation so awful I wanted to throw up. The only thing to do in a case like this was to seek out help, like an investigator collecting facts before deciding whether to make an arrest and that’s just what I did. First I approached Gilmour, and I could see as he touched his chin that there was blood, although it wasn’t oozing. My initial thought was that some old scar tissue was scraped off. God knows, Killer had enough of that on his face.
“Next, I asked him what happened. Doug said, “Wayne took a shot and the follow-through struck me on the chin.” To which I responded, “If that’s the case, a normal follow-through of a shot is not a penalty,” because contact made when a shooter is following through is exempt from a penalty for high-sticking…
“My next course of action was to appeal to both linesmen and hope that, from one of their vantage points, they could give me accurate information about what had happened. I gathered Ron Finn… and Kevin Collins… With an intensity and urgency in my voice, I asked for their help, if there was any to be had. Both linesmen answered they hadn’t had a sightline that could definitively determine what had happened.
“It was at this moment that I came to understand clearly that in hockey officiating, it’s not always black and white. And now that aching in the pit of my stomach only intensified, and my mouth went dry. It’s the most helpless feeling that I’ve ever had in any of the 2,165 NHL games that I refereed.”
Kerry Fraser listening to the national anthems with pride
The other thing as an official is that he commanded respect of the players on the ice. He did not bend to the star player’s will and had great lines of communication with the players so they can know what will and will not be called. As Wayne Gretzky described in the foreword for Kerry’s book:
”Players and refs often don’t see things the same way in the middle of a game. But one thing Kerry always had from every player was respect. You wold disagree with him, yell at him, maybe even say a few things under your breath that you wouldn’t want him to hear, but in the end you always knew Kerry was being as fair as he could possibly be.”
This was shown by how he handled both Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby when they both entered the NHL. When first entering the NHL, Lemieux was the focus of abuse from defending players due to his size, skill, and speed. It got to a point where when he felt a penalty should have been called, he would give the referee an earful. When he did it one too many times to Fraser, he told him “you’re supposed to be captain of this team and you don’t know how to be captain yet. You’re teammates don’t follow you and if you want to know how to be a leader look at that guy [points to Paul Coffey]. He’s a leader, he’s a captain.” This led the Pittsburgh Penguins to rally around their captain and show that Mario was really the leader of that team.
There was another incident later on with Lemieux after he returned from cancer. Lemieux was called for a penalty that he did not agree with. Once in the box, Lemieux threw his stick over the glass in disgust. This led to Fraser calling a misconduct penalty, where Lemieux burst out of the penalty box after him. That display led Mario to then NHL VP Brian Burke’s office for a hearing, in which he cited a feud between the two. In Kerry’s mind that wasn’t the case, but as he pointed out in his book, the hearing finally allowed Mario to issue his concerns to the powers that be. He feels that this helped lead to the new rule changes that occurred after the lockout.
Learning from this situation much later in his career, he had some similar issues with Sidney Crosby. Instead of calling Crosby out, he built him up. After arguing a call that led to Sidney getting a slashing call, Kerry told him, “You are the face of the game. You are a superstar… No I’m serious, you are the new face of the NHL. And I say that with the utmost respect for your skill and ability. With that comes huge responsibility, and I’d just like you to be aware of the impression you will leave on youngsters who emulate everything you do. So I recommend that you use that responsibility wisely.” What this did is let Crosby know that whenever he complains to the referee, he lets kids everywhere know that it’s ok to abuse officials. Crosby later in his career went to Fraser, to explain a situation respectfully, even though Sid felt that Fraser didn’t like him. I think Kerry would like to think that he taught Crosby that the officials are just trying to be as fair as can be, not trying to take sides.
In the end, Kerry Fraser has the NHL record for both regular season games officiated with 1,904 and most playoff games officiated with 261. He has worked in 12 Stanley Cup Finals, where his first in 1985 he became the youngest official ever to do so. He officiated in two all-star games in 1990 (Pittsburgh) and in 2000 (Toronto). To add to those special games, he has also officiated in the 1996 World Cup of Hockey (in Europe and the Gold Medal round between Canada and USA), 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, and the 2010 Winter Classic at Fenway Park between Boston and Philadelphia.
Through polls done by ESPN and the Toronto Sun up to his final season, he was voted as the best referee by the players numerous times. In the 1994 playoffs, despite the fact that Fraser was rated the NHL’s best official under the NHL’s evaluation process, he was left off the Stanley Cup Finals roster. The speculation is that Gary Bettman had declared that Fraser under no-circumstance was to officiate the Finals due to his public stance in the CBA talks with the NHL Referees. According to Rangers’ coach Mike Keenan, Mark Messier of the New York Rangers, who made the finals against the Vancouver Canucks that year, responded to this news with, “Kerry Fraser is the best referee in the National Hockey League, bar none, and that it was an injustice to the game that he wasn’t chosen to the finals”. In a December issue of the “Hockey News” in 2005, Kerry Fraser was also voted the most consistent referee as voted by the Players.
To add to his awards, Referee Magazine voted him in the top 10 referees in any sport. He was also named to the Ontario Minor Hockey Associations All-Team as a referee, along with the likes of Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, Doug Gilmour, Syl Apps, Roger Neilson, Jim Rutherford, Ray Scapinello, and Bill McCreary. This honour led to the Sarnia Sting of the OHL raising a banner in Fraser’s honour, as he is from Sarnia, Ontario.
Fraser continues to contribute to the game of hockey even in retirement. He now has a segment on TSN called “
C’mon Ref” in which he answers questions from fans about the rules of the games and calls on the ice. This is access that fans have rarely had before and has led to other stations doing similar things, for example on this website with Paul Stewart joining our team.
Everything about Kerry’s career shows that he was the best of the best in his job. He was a leader of the game on and off the ice and looks to enhance its well-being. Each of the required attributes in inducted an official (Sportsmanship, Character, and their contribution to the game) has been met whole heartedly. It is only a matter of time before this official gets to stand in the spotlight for his day and his team to shine.
I also would suggest to any hockey fan interested in stories about games they grew up watching to read Kerry Fraser’s book,
The Final Call. He doesn’t pull any punches in the book, admits when he was wrong, and has some funny stories throughout his NHL career. This was one of the books I’ve read over the past few years in which I can really say has improved my hockey knowledge overall.
Feel free to give me more suggestions of who to make a case for the Hockey Hall of Fame
in the comment section or you can contact me at:
Email:
[email protected]
Twitter: @kirshenblatt
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