The Final Call (35 page)

T
he house lights were down, and it was darker inside the arena than it was outside among the neon lights of New York City. The national anthem was being belted out with gusto by long-time soloist John Amirante as the New York Rangers and their archrivals, the Islanders, stood eyeing each other from their blue-line trenches. They were waiting for the puck to drop to begin Game Three of the 1981 Stanley Cup semifinals.

The contrast between the teams couldn’t have been greater. The Islanders, the defending champions, had finished the regular season atop the NHL standings with 110 points. In the playoffs to date, they had won 9 of 11 games (they would ultimately go 15–3 to claim their second of four consecutive Cup titles). The 13th-place Rangers were, at the time, in a major dry spell bordering on a dust-bowl drought. They hadn’t hoisted the Cup since 1940. Coach Fred Shero was fired after an abysmal 4–13–3 start, but they not only rebounded to make the playoffs, they upset fourth-place Los Angeles and second-place St. Louis. It seemed as though their luck had run out against the Islanders, though. They’d dropped 5–2 and 7–3 decisions on Long Island, and the series was shaping up to be a rout.

As the anthem reached its climax that night, so did the frenzy of the fans, and for an instant, the battle being described through song seemed to come to life.
And the rocket’s red glare
—SMACK!—
The bombs bursting in air
—SPLAT!
The ice was being pelted with a puzzling volley of squishy missiles. The lights came up and Billy Smith, goaltender for the Islanders and one of the players most hated by the Rangers faithful, was squatting in his cage, surrounded by giant sea bass heads that had been launched into the Islanders’ end with the precision that only riotous fans can muster when the target is the visiting team.

This strong (and strong-smelling) statement was in part an homage to the old days of the Original Six, when a Detroit fan would throw an octopus onto the ice during the Stanley Cup playoffs to represent the number of games needed to bring home the Cup. The Rangers faithful must also have been making a less-than-cordial reference to the fisheries of Long Island Sound as they turned the ice into an inverted ocean.

The passion, and sometimes extremism, of hockey fans, especially those from New York, can be both exhilarating and dangerous. The locals have welcomed me with open arms, and they have called to issue threats against my life and insults against my family. Not long after our move to the States, Kathy took three of our young girls to a pre-season game the Rangers were playing on Long Island. As fans tend to do, the two sitting directly in front of my family, a guy and his girlfriend, clad in their Rangers jerseys, were cursing very colourfully at my officiating. Our middle daughter, Jessica, who was 10 at the time, became very frightened and started to cry at what she thought was their hatred for her dad. Kathy, being the loving mother that she is, leaned down to the girlfriend of the fan, advised her that the referee’s family was sitting behind
them and that while cheering was fine, their language was scaring her little girl. Kathy politely asked the girlfriend if she would mind telling him to tone it down. In response, the big, foul-mouthed buffoon turned in Kathy’s direction and said, “Lady, if you don’t like it, take them to the fucking Muppet Show!” That wasn’t exactly the response Kathy was looking for. Then two big Islanders fans sitting in the row behind her rushed to the defence of my wife and children, shouting back, “Hey, asshole, didn’t you hear what the lady said? You’re scaring her kids.” As the verbal battle escalated between rival fans, the mother hen, now caught in the middle, collected her brood and quickly moved off before a Pier 6 brawl broke out.

Despite episodes like that one, I keep coming back, and New York remained one of my favourite cities to referee in. It’s not just Madison Square Garden, the calibre of play, or the energy of the fans, although that doesn’t hurt. I love the city itself, for the opportunities and experiences it affords me and my family when I bring them here. That’s why I’ve chosen to have two of my milestone games with the Rangers. Few places beat Manhattan for energy and flair.

In 1985, this passion unfortunately manifested itself in a call to my hotel room at 3:30 in the morning. It was my fifth year in the league, and those of you who remember my work on the ice back then might ask why it took someone so long to utter the threat, or even why he didn’t make good on it. It’s easy to joke about now, but on that frigid morning of February 26, I was just plain pissed off. The Rangers, coached by Craig Patrick, had been soundly trounced, 12–5, by the Winnipeg Jets the night before in a game that was unremarkable for anything other than the fact his team had taken the night off. Nothing controversial happened during the game, nor did the penalty stats suggest anything out of the ordinary. It was just an embarrassing blowout loss the Rangers suffered to a non-conference team they would only see three times all year.

Following the game, linesmen Ryan Bozak, Ron “the Bear” Asselstine, and I unpacked our equipment in our room at the New York Penta Hotel, across the street from the Garden, and scooted out the side door to join the boss, director of officiating John McCauley, for a few cold ones at the Blarney Rock. With all the great restaurants and bars in New York City, the Blarney Rock happened to be the officials’ choice for post-game libation, not because it was a high-class establishment but because it was convenient (on Thirty-third Street, literally out the side door of the Penta) and the bartenders looked after us very well. The regular crowd that filed in after Rangers games never bothered any of us, and it was usually a friendly and safe environment. This bar was, unfortunately, the place where McCauley’s career as an official had come to an end six years earlier. An out-of-towner from Kapuskasing, Ontario, sucker-punched him for a harmless comment after the Soviet National Team trounced a collection of NHL All-Stars in the third and final game of the 1979 Challenge Cup. John suffered permanently blurred vision from the punch, which multiple surgeries were unable to correct. It was then that he took on a management role as an officiating supervisor and ultimately as director of officiating.

We all had the next day off, so we relaxed as good conversation flowed as freely and abundantly as the beer. The four of us retired late, and it wasn’t until 3:30 a.m. that I fell asleep in the city that never does. Shortly thereafter, I was jolted awake when the phone rang and a guy with a thick New York accent told me he had been at the Rangers game and was in the lobby. He said he had a knife and was going to kill me, first by cutting my balls off when I checked out! I immediately called security and told them to rush to the house phones to look for the “slasher.” In one of my less intelligent moves, I then rushed down to the empty lobby, looking to confront my attacker. As the elevator doors opened, I was met
by hotel security and informed that the call had come from an outside line and not via the house phones.

I returned to my room, but was so ticked off that I couldn’t get back to sleep. I thought if I was up, McCauley should be too, so I called his room and told him of the threat. After listening patiently, John asked what time I was departing and then told me to go back to sleep. At 8:30, I paused and surveyed the large lobby of the Penta Hotel with a mix of angst and caution before getting out of the elevator. Standing guard behind three pillars, I could see Stickle, Bozak, and McCauley. They held their posts until I checked out, and then we formed a column and marched out of the hotel to grab a cab to the airport. All of my body parts remained intact.

The zeal that Rangers fans demonstrated was mirrored on the ice by the players, especially when it involved games with the Islanders. The physical battles were obvious, but the battles were also fought with words. There was none better at this form of warfare than pesky little forward Ray Ferraro. Ray would wait for the linesmen to arrive on the scene of a scrum, then fire off his best volley of insults. One night at Madison Square Garden, around Halloween, Tie Domi, who was playing for the Rangers then, was on the receiving end of one of Ray’s best barbs. Physically, Tie did not exactly fit the mould of an NHL “heavyweight.” He was short and stocky, with no neck and a rather large head. As tempers flared and verbal assaults were traded, Ferraro, from his position of safety, shouted, “Domi, with a fuckin’ head like that, you should be sitting on someone’s porch!” I had to stifle a laugh. Tie did not find the insult the least bit humorous and needed to be restrained by the linesmen from ripping Ferraro’s head off to hang on the rear-view mirror of his car.

To their credit, Rangers fans suffered from the same frustration as the players and deserved full marks for loyalty. The championship drought finally ended when the team acquired a rainmaker by the name of Mark Messier, one of the greatest leaders the game has ever known.

The Rangers met the New Jersey Devils in the Eastern Conference final in 1993–94 and took a 2–1 lead in the series, then dropped back-to-back games and were on the verge of elimination heading into Game Six in New Jersey. But on the day of the game, Messier, the Rangers captain, boldly predicted his team would win.

At the end of the second period, I made a bold prediction of my own, shared only with my linesmen, Pat Dapuzzo and Gerard Gauthier, in the privacy of the officials’ dressing room. I said, “Stick a fork in them—this Ranger team is done.” The first two periods had been all New Jersey. Goalie Martin Brodeur looked unbeatable until Alex Kovalev found a minor chink in his armour with just 1:41 left in the second period. I didn’t think the Rangers would solve him beyond that, nor did I believe they had enough left in the tank to pull off a road win. To make matters worse, they would begin the third period on the penalty kill, as Esa Tikkanen was in the box for kneeing Stéphane Richer.

It would be the last time I ever doubted the words of Mark Messier. He took the game on his back and tied the score by sliding a backhander past Brodeur just 2:48 into the third. We had a new game going! Mess then scored the go-ahead goal by pouncing on a rebound at 12:12, and the Rangers didn’t look back from that point on. With 2:49 on the clock, Glenn Anderson of the Rangers two-handed Bernie Nicholls and took a slashing penalty. Fifty-six seconds later, Messier won a faceoff in the
Rangers’ zone, to the right of Mike Richter. Messier drew the puck back to his defenceman at the bottom of the faceoff circle, who moved the puck behind the goal to the other corner. John MacLean of the Devils got there first and tried to centre a pass in front of the net, but it went past the intended target and right onto Messier’s stick in the slot. Mess turned with the puck and fired a shot right into the heart of the Devils’ unguarded cage. Mark Messier made good on his “called shot” by scoring his first hat trick as a New York Ranger (a natural one, at that) to force Game Seven two nights later at Madison Square Garden. The feat has been described as one of the greatest individual efforts in the history of the game. It certainly made a believer out of me—and only 20 minutes before, I had all but written them off.