The Final Call (6 page)

I felt like I had just jumped out of an airplane and was in free fall, and I hoped that the ’chute would open before I hit the ground!

I held my breath as John looked at Jim and asked, “Can we do that?” I could have jumped across the table and given Gregory a big kiss when, after some thought, he said, “Yeah, I think we can do that.” I shook their hands to cement the deal, and after extending my sincere thanks I rushed off to call Kathy with the good news. I felt like we’d just struck the mother lode.

That wasn’t the end of it, though. We were just getting settled in when I got a telephone call from John Ziegler, president of the NHL. It had taken about a month for the particulars of my arrangement with McCauley and Gregory to make it to the top of the chain of command.

The tone of Mr. Ziegler’s voice clearly demonstrated that he was not calling to welcome me to the neighbourhood: “Kerry, how the hell can you even afford to buy a coach’s house?” While he acknowledged the fine judgment I demonstrated on the ice, he
chastised me for exercising extremely poor judgment in buying a coach’s house in the first place, let alone turning to the league to lend me money for it. Was it the only house on the market? he asked.

I bit my tongue, as I did not want to throw John McCauley under the bus by telling Mr. Ziegler that it was John who had told me to look at Keenan’s house.

The interest-free part of the loan really got him going because, as he put it, “I don’t even get an interest-free loan from the league!” (I could have suggested he needed a better negotiator, but again thought better of it.) The final edict he handed down was that I was to make full disclosure, in writing, of all the particulars of the purchase, and a budget outlining how I expected to pay for the home. I was to send this to Ken Sawyer, the league’s senior VP of finance, within the next couple of business days. (Ken is a brilliant guy who, for the past number of years, has been the chief financial officer of the Pittsburgh Penguins under Mario Lemieux.)

Armed with the new CBA, including my C-Pool bonus, substantial salary increases for years worked after the first season, my track record (albeit a short one at that time) of Stanley Cup playoff compensation, and some smoke and mirrors, I was able to convince Sawyer (and even myself) that we were in great financial shape to purchase Keenan’s house. After receiving the material, Ken called and said it was obvious to him I would have no problems keeping up the payments. Fortunately, Ken was proven correct.

Over the years, I’ve employed some creative methods to minimize the degree to which my training infringed on our summer family time. In 1994, I realized a dream of mine when Kathy and I bought a new 34-foot sailboat (of course, it had to sleep seven down below) and named her, appropriately,
The Search Is Over
.

This was truly a family project. Kathy and the children had to listen to me pining over boats I had seen during trips to Marina del Rey when I was in Los Angeles to work Kings games, and watch as I daydreamed and wore out the pages of the sailing magazines I subscribed to. I came home from one West Coast trip to find a shoebox decorated with sailboat cutouts and a sign that read, “
DAD’S SAILBOAT FUND
.”

I was so touched that the kids were kicking in their change and money from odd jobs. At one point, the shoebox fund was up to $54. But the next time I came home, it was down to $33!

The boat was delivered during the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs to a yacht club on the Sassafras River, just off Chesapeake Bay in Georgetown, Maryland. We pretty much lived aboard
The Search Is Over
for most of that summer and the three that followed, cruising and exploring historic Chesapeake Bay. Wonderful experiences and lasting memories were created there for all. One downside, however, was that I didn’t have access to a gym, so I was forced to improvise when the need to resume training hit me quicker than a Chesapeake Bay thunderstorm. At the time, Kara, our youngest, was four years old. (She is now in her sophomore year as an English Lit major at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland.)

When we weren’t sailing, we were swimming in the pool or the bay for hours. I found swimming to be a great cross-training activity. As I improved at swimming distances, I looked to add some resistance. I would tether a five-gallon pail to my safety harness and drag it behind me as I swam. With September approaching, I felt the need to turn it up a notch, and little Kara, in her life jacket, fit perfectly in the pail, providing me with the extra resistance to push me over the top. After training with Kara in tow, my body fat registered below 10 per cent at training camp.

Officials are no different than players in that we’re just as susceptible to injury. I certainly have had my share over the years. As a young hockey player, I learned from my father that a champion never gives in to injury or the pain associated with it. You never let them know you’re hurt. Basically, Dad said that if the bone hasn’t broken through the skin, don’t come off the ice; and if you do, make sure your team has the puck! He schooled me well from his experience not only as a hockey player but as a semiprofessional boxer as well.

In 1982, Edmonton Oiler defenceman Paul Coffey intercepted a pass in the neutral zone just 10 minutes into the first period and tried to pound a slapshot back into the attacking zone. The problem was, I had been chasing the play out of the zone and was 20 feet away—and in the direct line of Paul’s slapper. The puck struck me directly on the ankle and caromed off the end of my fibula, exiting the playing surface and stopping play.

Paul apologized for not having seen me, the linesman got another puck, and we played on. I knew the damned thing was fractured because the pain intensified and extended up to the knee joint as the game wore on. Since we had only one referee on the ice in those days and Dad’s rule (the bone hadn’t broken the skin) held true, I finished the game. Between periods I kept my skate laced tightly and walked around instead of sitting down in an attempt to keep some mobility in the joint. Once the game was over and I finally removed the boot, my foot instantly blew up as if it had been inflated by an air compressor. One of the linesmen in that game, Wayne Forsey, was living in Edmonton. I had made plans to stay at his apartment because he, Swede Knox, and I were driving to Calgary for a game the next day.

Since I didn’t need an X-ray to tell me the ankle was broken, and didn’t want to spend the rest of my Friday night in the emergency room of the Edmonton hospital, I hobbled out of Northlands Coliseum, supported by a broken hockey stick with a towel taped to the end, which I placed under my arm as a crutch. We went straight to Forsey’s apartment, where I immediately self-medicated with a bottle of Scotch. I had a sound sleep that night, but Forsey said my loud moaning from the spare bedroom kept him awake all night. I called referee-in-chief Scotty Morrison first thing the next morning and informed him that my ankle was broken. Since we didn’t have an overabundance of officials at that time, and it wasn’t easy moving people around the West, I had taken the liberty of looking over the assignment sheets to see who might be available to fill in for me.

Dan Marouelli was an Edmonton fireman who was also working as an NHL trainee referee in the American Hockey League. I saw that he was home, so I suggested that Scotty could use him to work the game on an emergency basis. Scotty assigned Dan as a linesman, and turned to Swede, a highly respected veteran linesman, to act as referee. The boys dropped me off at the Calgary hospital on the way to the hotel, and I spent the next five hours being attended to.

While X-rays confirmed the obvious (broken fibula), the ankle was far too swollen to put in a cast. It would take a week and a half before the swelling had subsided enough to allow for a fibreglass cast to be applied, and seven weeks before I returned to action, in time for the final month of the regular season. In place of a cast, the ankle was wrapped with a Tensor bandage, and the broken hockey stick I’d hobbled into the hospital on was replaced with a pair of crutches. I went to the Flames game that evening and watched from the press box. Sitting beside me was my dear friend, and the head of Calgary’s off-ice officials crew, Don Young. Don became my “male nurse” and porter the next morning,
showing up at the hotel to get me out of bed, dressed, and to the airport on time.

On board the flight to Toronto, I had the good fortune to sit beside the next prime minister of Canada, John Turner. We had a delightful conversation throughout the duration of our flight, which helped me forget about my throbbing ankle. Mr. Turner was a charming seatmate, and I regret not taking him up on his kind invitation to hunt grouse with him at his Connecticut estate once my ankle healed.

Dan Marouelli, subsequently joined the staff as a full-time referee and had an outstanding career. He also retired at the end of the 2009–10 season.

Despite my decision not to wear a helmet until it became mandatory under our collective-bargaining agreement, which came during my final three seasons in the NHL, I only had three facial cuts and one in the back of my head that required stitches. Not a bad batting average over all those years and games. Either I was so bloody short that the pucks generally went over my perfectly coiffed hair or I had developed a keen, laser-like sense of awareness for incoming projectiles. I like to think the latter is true.

One recurring problem I have to deal with involves both knees. When I was 15 years old and playing Midget AAA hockey in the All-Ontario semifinals against the Toronto Young Nationals, the blade of my left skate got stuck in a rut where the Zamboni door opened. An opponent hit me from in front, causing my body to twist—a full rotation—in the direction of contact. With my left skate locked, my left leg from the knee down didn’t follow the rest of my body. I ripped the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) clean through and tore the medial meniscus as well. To this day, I have
never experienced pain like that. For 10 or 15 seconds, it was excruciating; then it just stopped.

I was on crutches for a week and watched the final game of the series from behind the bench in Toronto as my teammates and future NHL stars Wayne Merrick (four Stanley Cups with the NY Islanders) and Bob Neely (Toronto Maple Leafs) put us in into the Ontario championship against Copper Cliff the following weekend. I was back in the lineup taking a regular shift and was able to play two out of three games in the championship series. The first of four surgeries to my left knee was scheduled for the end of the following season, my first in junior hockey. Back then, they didn’t repair the ACL.

A big cut on the inside of my knee allowed the surgeon to clean out the torn meniscus, resulting in a lengthy rehabilitation process. In 1972, I finished playing as captain of the Sarnia Bees of the Southern Ontario Junior A League. In spite of several scholarship offers to top Division 1 college programs, I realized I had come to the end of the line as far as my playing aspirations were concerned. It was time to find a job, preferably one within the game that I so dearly loved. Little did I realize just how quickly a door of opportunity would become unlocked when Ted Garvin introduced me to officiating.