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Ex-Leaf Doug Gilmour looks back at the Wayne Gretzky high stick in 1993 and sees ‘the worst officiated game you can imagine’
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Like I always thought the league was looking for the Kings to get to the final, if only for the sake of the great god US TV
Our occasional series, Hindsight In 2020, digs into some of the most significant moves and moments in Toronto sports history: hirings and firings, trades and non-trades, things you knew a little bit about or didn’t know at all. This week, Wayne Gretzky, the high stick and the end of the Maple Leafs’ 1993 playoff run ...
It is 27 years since the most infamous non-call in Maple Leafs history, but everyone remembers the lasting images from overtime of Game 6 of the 1993 Campbell Conference final.
Doug Gilmour obviously had blood on his chin. Kerry Fraser and his linesmen clearly had blind spots. Wayne Gretzky, instead of being rightly ejected for a high stick, scored the winner that set up a Game 7 heartbreak at Maple Leaf Gardens and unleashed a torrent of bitterness that still lingers.
And as much as the story of Toronto’s near miss has been told and retold through the decades, it took the coronavirus for Gilmour to do something he’d never done before: That is, watch Game 6.
“I’ve seen the high stick many times, obviously. But I’d never watched that full game,” Gilmour said recently.
It was in the early days of the pandemic lockdown that Gilmour, the leading scorer and double-shifting linchpin of that well-remembered Leafs era, sat down for one of the most heavily dissected matches in the pantheon of Toronto sports as it was replayed on Sportsnet. That is not something every key participant can say they’ve done. Wendel Clark, Gilmour’s beloved teammate who scored a hat trick that went for naught on the night in question, said he has still never seen Game 6 in full and has no intention of ever seeking it out.
Like I always thought the league was looking for the Kings to get to the final, if only for the sake of the great god US TV
“You know what? Truthfully, that had to be the worst officiated game you can imagine,” Gilmour said. “Not even the high stick, but all the other penalties (Fraser) missed. What a joke. I can’t wait to see him one day and tell him, ‘OK, you missed the high stick. That’s fine. But what a bad game you reffed.’ ”
For many years before he’d actually watched Game 6, Gilmour had urged Maple Leaf fans to let bygones by bygones — to cease and desist with their hostilities toward the officials who presided over a game in which the Kings, playing in the Los Angeles Forum, scored four of their five goals on the power play, including the overtime decider. Fraser and his family, after all, have endured copious abuse from the get-go, everything from property damage to verbal tirades. And the 67-year-old Fraser, who hung up his NHL stripes in 2010 and has since been diagnosed with a rare blood disorder, has repeatedly fallen on his sword, for years acknowledging the missed high stick and faithfully re-explaining it to anyone who asked.
But Gilmour said watching the game made him finally see it through the eyes of the Toronto faithful who’ve had a difficult time letting it rest.
“I’m just like everybody else. I’m a hockey fan. I lived it. I played it. But I’m sitting there thinking, ‘This is getting me frustrated, just watching this game,’ ” Gilmour said. “I’m in the backyard having a cocktail going, ‘Oh my god. Come on. Replay that again. Fast forward, run it back. Come on — that’s not a call.’”
