FRIGID CALL

Oilers doctor gave OK to play outside in 2003 Classic

There will be no anxiety-filled “frozen moment” at this Heritage Classic. The weather is going to co-operate Sunday for the game between the Edmonton Oilers and Winnipeg Jets.

But 13 years ago, the first regular season outdoor game in National Hockey League history was almost cancelled just before the puck dropped on the Oilers and Montreal Canadiens at Commonwealth Stadium. According to some of the men who watched that tilt teeter on the edge of a cliff, Oilers physician Dr. David Reid saved the day.

“This was the moment, really the frozen moment, when the hard decisions were going to be made, right there,” said former Oilers president Patrick LaForge, who listed the principals at that summit: himself, Montreal GM Bob Gainey, NHLPA boss Bob Goodenow, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, Oilers GM Kevin Lowe, NHL icemaker Dan Craig and Dr. Reid.

Current Oilers Entertainment Group vice-president Don Metz said he was also there.

LaForge recounted the conversation.

“‘Is the ice good, Dan? Yes, the ice is fine. Are the benches heated? Benches are heated.’

“Gary was contemplating. He was quietly listening, taking it all in. He knew at the end of the day that it was going to be on him. He was listening to us, Gainey and Lowe, talking. Then Dr. Reid broke in.”

A guardian of personal and patient privacy, Reid has never told his story. But on Thursday, having heard that LaForge, Metz and Lowe all offered versions of the tale, Reid recounted that “frozen moment” for the first time.

“It was very cold that day, 40 below I think. My wife says 25. She’s got a better memory than me. Anyway, it was damn cold,” Reid began. “I couldn’t believe the number of people in the stands an hour or two hours before the game. They were pouring in and I’m thinking those people will freeze to death up there. But they all seemed happy.

“It was very well set out for the players. There was heating on their benches and the penalty box. So I think everything went well until the Montreal team went out to skate for the warmup.

“I think they expressed reservation, I don’t know how strongly, to Mr. Bettman and whoever was the lawyer for the league at the time.”

He said that concern prompted a meeting.

“They came to me and said the Montreal players are thinking of not playing this game because it’s too cold and they’re concerned they may damage their lungs, they may get frostbite.”

There were tens of thousands of people in the stands. The TV cameras were there for the show.

“It looked like an impending disaster,” Reid said.

“So I said to them: ‘I can tell you this. I used to teach a course at university on exercise in extreme conditions — at depths and altitude, extreme heat and cold. And I know one thing: the air, whether it comes in the nose or mouth, by the time it gets to the lungs, it’s heated sufficiently that it won’t cause any serious lung damage.

“And I said, what I used to tell my students is that in the war, the British Spitfire pilots would go over to France and in their dogfights some of them would get the windshields shot out of their planes, and they would come back at quite a high altitude and at speed so the wind chill factor was way worse than it is out there. And while the odd one got some frostbite on some exposed flesh, none of them got serious damage to their lungs.

“So if you tell those players that British air force pilots could do it in the war, surely they could go out and play a game for a couple of hours.

“I think the message was delivered. And they came out very happily and said the game was going to go on.

“But to my horror, I think it could have been Bettman who went on television before the game, saying they had contacted a world expert on environment and conditions in the cold. And this world expert had told them no harm would come to the players. Their airways were safe.

“I was horrified. I was at least a professor of physical education at that time. And a professor of rehab and also a professor of surgery. So I was at least a professor at university. I was actually a local expert, not a world expert.”

The anxiety reached a peak in that frozen moment, but it had been building all week as the mercury took a nosedive and snow piled up, preventing organizers from having junior players test the ice in game conditions and settle the ice pad into place.

“The night before I left the rink, I don’t know, 10 o’clock at night, and it was cold, man,” LaForge recalled. “I was cold. Everybody was looking at one another, but nobody said anything, of course.

“Nobody even breathed the idea that we weren’t going to do it.”