EX-REF BACKS NHL ON WIDEMAN
Kerry Fraser has seen it all
Kerry Fraser is on the phone and talking about the time when he put away his whistle and fought a player. Well, jersey’d him, to be exact.
It was sometime around 1974 or 1975 and Fraser was officiating a game in the minors. He had just handed Nova Scotia Voyageurs forward Richard Lemieux his third penalty when Lemieux dropped his stick and kicked it across the ice towards Fraser, making contact with the referee’s skate. Fraser kicked him out of the game for unsportsmanlike conduct and Lemieux reportedly lost it.
“He threw his gloves down and started charging towards me,” Fraser said. “I put my hands in front of me, like a peace offering, and he threw a punch. I ducked it and grabbed his arm. He had one more punch to throw and I caught it and pulled his jersey quickly over his head.
“Ken Houston (who was a teammate of Lemieux’s) thought I was going to smoke him, so he picked me up in a bear hug. Now, he’s 6-foot-2 and I’m 5-foot-7, so my little feet are dangling off the ice. Luckily the linesmen came in, because my arms were pinned to the side and Lemieux had a freebie if he wanted.”
Fraser, who holds the NHL record for most games by an official, has seen it all.
He’s been hit by errant pucks, punched in the head while breaking up fights and called every name in the book. One time, he was hit so hard from behind that he suffered whiplash and tore his rotator cuff. Another time, a player got so angry that he spat right into Fraser’s mouth.
So when Calgary’s Dennis Wideman received a 20-game suspension for cross-checking linesman Don Henderson in a Jan. 27 game — a suspension that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman upheld on Wednesday, but which could be headed toward a neutral discipline arbitrator — Fraser was pleased with the sentence.
It was not that Wideman was a dirty player or even purposefully meant to hit Henderson. It was that the NHL stood by its officials, who should always be off-limits regardless of the circumstances.
“It’s true, Dennis Wideman is not the type of player that is abusive towards officials. That’s my experience of him,” said Fraser. “But players make mistakes. Everybody does. This shows strong support for the officials.”
Not that the league had much choice in the matter. Had Bettman softened the term of the sentence, Fraser is confident that officials would have punished Wideman, the Flames and the league in another way.
“There would have been less tolerance for the player and the team,” said Fraser. “Not to say there would be penalties invented, but there would certainly be a more rigid enforcement of the rules standard applied. I think the league demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that they support their officials and that they don’t accept any abuse of the officials.”