The night Flames became raging inferno
Fleury, Reese put up some eye-popping stats in 13-1 win over Sharks 25 years ago
Twenty-five years after the fact, you will still find several mentions of this night in the Calgary Flames franchise record book.
With a 13-1 shellacking of the San Jose Sharks at the Saddledome on Feb. 10, 1993, the Flames erased the previous club marks for the most lamp-lightings in one game and the most one-sided margin of victory.
Their star forward posted a plus9 rating. Whoa.
Their goaltender piled up three assists, establishing a league record. Wow.
“I think when I got to about plus6, I just started laughing to myself,” Flames franchise icon Theoren Fleury recalled. “Because it was just unheard of. I was plus-9 in that game, and I think I only finished plus-14 for the entire year.”
Twenty-five years later, Jeff Reese still chuckles at the memory.
Reese, then backup netminder for the Flames and now a goaltending coach for the Dallas Stars, left his name all over the scoresheet that night.
He assisted on Robert Reichel’s would-be game-winner at the 12:43 mark of the opening period.
He earned a second helper on a strike by Gary Roberts in the middle stanza.
When Reichel capped his hat trick in the third, Reese completed a three-peat of a sort.
Three assists! For the goalie! “It was one of those nights that everything went in, everything went our way,” Reese said. “But you know, one thing I do remember from that night is I had to make a few saves, too. You forget about that, but I actually had a decent game. You look and see 13-1, but it’s not like I only faced eight shots. I had to make some saves that night, too.”
Twenty-six saves, in fact. As Dave King, then head coach of the Flames, quipped after the rout: “It’s not very often that a goaltender has a great game offensively and defensively.”
Offensively, it was a historic game for Reese, who totalled 39 appearances — and five assists — during his 22-month stint at the Saddledome.
“We didn’t know it was a record until, I think, the next day,” Reese said. “We were really surprised. I was anyway. I thought a guy like Grant Fuhr would have had it, or even (Ron) Hextall. I thought maybe Fuhrsy because of the way the Oilers played and how good they were. I think he has the record for most assists in a season.” (Fuhr set that standard with 14 setups in 1983-84).
“We did send the stick, eventually, to the (Hockey) Hall of Fame,” Reese continued. “I’d kept the stick — they put a nice plaque on it for me — but then we moved it on to the hall of fame. I don’t know what they did with it.”
It was believed Fleury also made history that night, but it turns out former Philadelphia Flyers defence man Tom Bl ad on—a twotime Stanley Cup champion during the Broad Street Bullies era — was plus-10 in an 11-1 thumping of the Cleveland Barons in December 1977. (Bladon scored four and added four assists in that contest, breaking Bobby Orr’s single-game mark for points by a defenceman. He now shares that accolade with Paul Coffey).
You’ll find Fleury’s name elsewhere in the NHL’s record log. The feisty forward scored three shorthanded goals in a road victory over the St. Louis Blues on March 9, 1991, something that hadn’t been done before and hasn’t been done since.
“I don’t think you enter the league thinking about setting records. You put in the work, and then you get there, and once you get there, it’s about winning Stanley Cups,” said Fleury, a rookie on the Flames’ championship squad in 1989 and later the club’s leading point producer in six different seasons.
“But it’s great at a sportsman’s banquet. It makes for great storytelling — ‘Oh, by the way, I was plus-9 in a game’ or ‘Oh, I scored three short-handed goals in one game.’”
Twenty-five years later, the Flames and the Sharks are scrapping for one of three playoff slots in the Pacific Division.
The Sharks have been one of the NHL’s most consistent crews, missing out on the spring dance just twice in two decades. But, like basically every expansion squad before the odds-defying Vegas Golden Knights, they had their growing pains.
The Sharks mustered 17 wins in their inaugural campaign and were worse in their second, the winter of 1992-93.
They arrived at the Saddledome that night with a 6-46-2 record.
When they departed, the had dropped 16 in a row. They were on their way to an NHL record for the most losses in one season, with 71.
The Flames didn’t show any mercy.
Already up 7-1 at the second intermission, the hosts established another club and league mark by scoring three times in the opening 53 seconds of the third.
They didn’t let up then, either, with Reichel and Ronnie Stern both finishing off hat tricks.
Reese was admittedly feeling bad for Arturs Irbe and his buddy, Jeff Hackett, the masked men at the opposite end.
Fleury, who scored once and racked up five helpers, insists he didn’t feel a shred of sympathy.
“Back then, we kept the pedal on the gas a lot more than I’d say teams do nowadays,” Fleury said. “Now, nobody likes to run up the score. It’s nicey, nicey nice. Back then, that’s not how we played the game.
“It’s like when you hang out with the old Oilers boys, and you say, ‘Jeez, Gretz was getting 200 points a year.’ And you know what they say? ‘Yeah, Gretz wanted 300.’ That was his attitude. And I think that was the attitude of what it was like back in the ’80s and ’90s — just get as many points as you can.”
The as-many-points-as-you-can mantra doesn’t typically apply to the guy in goalie pads.
But on this night, Reese was racking ’em up.
To put his offensive outburst in perspective, consider that current Flames stalwart Mike Smith — arguably the best puckhandler and puck-mover at his position — has never collected more than three assists in a season.
“This one, I truly believe somebody will tie it. Especially with overtime, with three-on-three,” Reese said. “Nobody has got there yet, but I think it certainly will be tied. Now, will a goalie ever get four? I don’t know, that could be stretching it. But I believe it will be tied.
“For now, it’s a fun thing to have.”
We kept the pedal on the gas a lot more than I’d say teams do nowadays. Now, nobody likes to run up the score. It’s nicey, nicey nice.