The Final Call (23 page)

Scott Stevens’s hit was legal by everyone’s account. That playoff
season, so many players were hit in the very same fashion. Flyers forward Daymond Langkow was planted by Stevens earlier in the series and was forced to miss a game. At the very least, opponents should have been vigilant every time Stevens was on the ice, especially when they were crossing the Devils blue line. In his case, Eric Lindros should have given way to the defenceman, but the Big E never gave way to anyone throughout his playing career. I am, unfortunately, reminded of the answer to a question my wife asked me after Eric’s very first game in the NHL; a game I refereed. Kathy asked me what I thought of the young Mr. Lindros. I recall saying, “He’ll be great if he lasts. He plays with reckless abandon and is used to playing against boys. Now he’s playing against men.” When the ultimate power forward met the sheer brute force of the ultimate power defenceman, it was Stevens, the defenceman, who was left standing. Lindros was never the same player again.

Scott Stevens led the Devils to a Stanley Cup championship over the Dallas Stars and earned a Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP. He won the Smythe trophy on the basis of the crushing bodychecks he delivered throughout the playoffs. He had certainly mastered the art better than anyone who’d ever played the game in his position.

The Devils no longer reside in the swamp, where they were forced to celebrate Cup championships in the parking lot of their arena, because there wasn’t a main street to parade down. They now play in the beautiful new Prudential Arena, a.k.a. the Rock, in Newark.

The trap that they became famous for changed the team’s reputation as well as the face of the game. Instead of Mickey
Mouse, they became Mighty Mouse through the efforts of Lou Lamoriello. This team, his team, boasts three Stanley Cups and is a force to be reckoned with every year. The league and its owners have changed rules to try to neutralize the style the Devils were so famous for. Great players are now allowed to move more freely around the ice, making for a much faster, more exciting game. The New Jersey Devils, under Lamoriello’s shrewd guidance, have made adjustments of their own to the “New NHL.” I worked my last game at the Rock just before the Olympic break where the Nashville Predators would be defeated by the Devils 5–2. The story this night was newly acquired superstar, Ilya Kovalchuk, who scored his 32nd goal of the season and added an assist as he delighted the fans with his explosive offensive talents. Zach Parise, who also had a goal (his 27th) and an assist now had a player to complement his extensive skills.

The Devils have certainly come a long way from their original home in Colorado, where I, as a 28-year-old rookie, began my NHL career.

M
y very first game as a referee in the National Hockey League, on Friday, October 17, 1980, was in the mile-high city of Denver. It was more of a Western cowboy town back then, as opposed to the cosmopolitan city of today. The team was called the Rockies, and I only had to look out the window of my hotel room to understand where they got the name. The snow-capped mountains seemed close enough to reach out and touch. The air was clean to the taste and the crowd at McNichols Sports Arena, as befitted their rugged mountain lifestyle, was a raucous group that enjoyed the rougher side of the game.

I arrived as a cocky, baby-faced, 28-year-old rookie referee with a whistle in one hand and the rule book in my back pocket. I was paired with seasoned linesmen Jim Christison and Ryan Bozak, both great guys and well-respected officials.

The Minnesota North Stars were the visiting team that night, and their roster was loaded with such young stars as Dino Ciccarelli, Bobby Smith, and Craig Hartsburg. Their coach, Glen Sonmor, was very tough on me during my early years in the NHL until fellow referee Ron Fournier and I met up with Glen and Los Angeles Kings star Charlie Simmer while on vacation in Hawaii.
We bumped into them around the pool during happy hour one afternoon. (I told Sonmor I heard the hotel thought of cancelling it when he arrived.) After a few drinks, we arranged a game of golf for the next day. I rode with Glen in the golf cart. Aside from seeing what a great guy he really was I also learned that he had only one eye. I had to look for his ball constantly during the round. I busted his chops about always yelling at me from the bench and asked how the hell he could see what was going on with only one good eye. Without breaking the rhythm of his backswing, Glen said, “Between the two of us we’ve got a pair!”

The Rockies, a team that Billy MacMillan had inherited as coach from Don Cherry the year before, were not very successful. Now a hockey icon in Canada, Cherry was as much a player and fan favourite then as he is now. Under Grapes, the team had adopted the slogan “Come to the fights and watch a Rockies game break out,” and it boosted ticket sales. It didn’t matter who was coaching, however; aside from a few great players in Lanny McDonald (35 goals) and 21-year-old defencemen Rob Ramage and Joel Quenneville, they just didn’t have the horses. Two future general managers also played on that team as 21-year-olds: Steve Tambellini (now with the Edmonton Oilers) and Mike Gillis (Vancouver Canucks).

In the rule book I was carrying in my back pocket was an addition that had just been implemented that season, one that none of the players, coaches, or fans had read yet. The league was concerned about the impact of all the brawling throughout the mid- to late 1970s on the image of the game; during that period, the NHL had lost its network-TV contract in the U.S. Historically, whenever a fight broke out between two players, the remaining players on the ice would drop their gloves and hang on to one another to keep someone from jumping in. With their dance partner in hand, they were often content to watch the main event from a distance. In 1980, the NHL decided that any player who dropped
his gloves after the original altercation was to receive a 10-minute misconduct. Early in the first period of my very first game, the Rockies’ second home game of the season, a fight broke out. All the players instinctively dropped their gloves—and ended up in the penalty box as per the new rule. Not long afterward, a second fight broke out, with the same result. I had both penalty boxes filled beyond capacity; short of sitting on each other’s knee, their only option was to stand. The players and the crowd turned hostile against this rookie referee who they thought was making up the rules as he went. Debris littered the ice at various intervals, and the boo birds sang in unison.

The penalty-filled game ended in a 5–5 tie. On the way out of McNichols Arena, Bozak, Christison, and I walked through the tunnel to where the North Stars’ bus was being loaded up. Along the way, we marched past players Glen Sharpley and Al MacAdam. The area was exposed to the fans, who stood above the ramp behind a chain-link fence—usually, hoping to catch a glimpse of the players. This night, they wanted a piece of the referee they thought had screwed up the game. They started shouting obscenities and firing things over the fence as soon as they saw me. As we walked past the North Stars’ bus, Sharpley said to Christison, “Hey, Chris, if you guys need any help, we’re right here for you.” Without skipping a beat, the witty Jim Christison replied, “No thanks, Sharp. I’ve seen you fight!”

We jumped into a cab and, after unpacking our gear back at the hotel, I bought the beer all night at Zangs Brewing Company, as was the first-game tradition. While I had survived my first NHL game, I only hoped that it would get easier from that point on. I, like all rookies, would experience growing pains, but I worked hard to minimize my mistakes and learn from the ones I was bound to make. I had realized a dream that night, but also recognized I had an awful lot to learn.

There was a small nucleus of fans who mourned the loss of their Rockies when they were sold and moved to New Jersey to become the Devils in 1982. These loyalists would be rewarded in 1995, however, when they got a team that was poised to win the Stanley Cup.

The Quebec Nordiques had concluded they could not survive in their small Canadian market, given the economic climate of the NHL at the time. A lockout interrupted the 1994–95 season, resulting in a shortened schedule of 48 games. The Nordiques finished second in the 26-team league that season, and I could tell that wherever the team landed, one of the first orders of business in the new location would be to apply at city hall for a Stanley Cup parade permit and start building floats.

In 1989–90, the Nordiques had hit rock bottom, losing 61 of 80 games. Some talented players, including Joe Sakic and Mats Sundin, were already in the pipeline, but the turnaround really shifted gears when they got the first-overall pick in the 1991 entry draft. Ironically, the player they chose never played a single game for Quebec. Eric Lindros was already a controversial figure; in 1989, he refused to join the junior team that drafted him, the Soo Greyhounds. He had warned the Nordiques that he would not sign a contract with them, but they chose him anyway. True to his word, he spent the season in junior and playing for the Canadian Olympic team. A year passed, and Lindros’s resolve showed no sign of weakening. On the day of the 1992 draft, the Nordiques traded him—twice, to the Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers. An arbitrator ruled that the Philadelphia trade stood. In return for Lindros, Quebec received what seemed like half the Flyer franchise: future MVP Peter Forsberg, whom they’d chosen in the first round in 1991; goalie Ron Hextall, who had won the
Conn Smythe and Vezina trophies in his rookie season of 1986–87; high-scoring defenceman Steve Duchesne; role players Mike Ricci, Kerry Huffman, and Chris Simon; a couple of first-round draft picks; and $15 million in cash. Overnight, Quebec went from a 21st-place team to fourth place overall in 1992–93, and Forsberg hadn’t even joined the team yet. He would become the league’s rookie of the year in 1995.

Another rookie, Marc Crawford, was hired as the Nordiques’ coach in 1994–95. His team won 12 of their first 13 games, and he went on to win the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year. He also received a “career warning” from me for the vilest verbal assault to be levied against me from behind the bench in my entire career.

Just before the playoffs, Crawford’s team hit a patch where they couldn’t seem to win on the road and the coach was at a loss as to what to do. I caught up with them during a trip to Florida for back-to-back games. They lost 5–2 to Tampa Bay, a team that finished 28 points behind them in the 48-game schedule, and two nights later were upset 4–2 by a Florida team that was struggling to make the playoffs. Ten minutes in, the Panthers were up 3–0, despite having taken only seven shots at goalie Jocelyn Thibault. Florida had scored on their first two power plays—quite a feat, as they were one of the weakest clubs in the league with the man advantage. Despite a first-period goal, the Nordiques couldn’t seem to get anything going, and they were obviously frustrated. With about a minute and a half remaining, Peter Forsberg broke his stick on a Panthers player. I called him for interference. It was a tactical error on Forsberg’s part, because Quebec might have wanted to pull their goalie for an extra attacker in a bid to tie the score. Now, they’d have no such advantage.