After 30 years in NHL, referee retires

Kerry Fraser thrust his arms outward Sunday afternoon to signal Brian Boucher's playoff-clinching save against the New York Rangers. As the crowd erupted, exultant Flyers poured onto the ice. And Fraser headed off to a small dressing room in the bowels of the Wachovia Center to pack up his skates one last time.

After 30 years as an NHL referee, he was hanging it up.

"What a hockey game," said the Hammonton, N.J., resident, wiping the sweat from his face with a towel. "What a finish."

For three decades, Fraser has made a living officiating a dizzying-paced game where players travel at close to 30 m.p.h. and fire pucks of hard rubber at more than three times that speed.

"Two hundred by 85 feet of ice," he said. "That's been my office."

Fraser has been knocked unconscious by pucks and had bones shattered by a slapshot. He was assaulted by a player and has been vilified for controversial calls.

He's been known as "the Human Haircut" for his shellacked coiffure and was one of the last NHL officials to don a helmet.

Fans have called him blind, arrogant, and a lot worse. But Fraser is highly respected by his peers and some of the game's greats. In this year's ESPN poll, he was again voted by active players as the league's best referee.

"He's a great ref, no doubt about it" said Bobby Clarke, the legendary former Flyers captain, never one to be effusive about officials.

Fraser chose the date of his final match in 2006, part of a retirement agreement the NHL reached with its senior refs. He has officiated 2,165 games - over 400 more than anyone else in league history. And at age 57, he has lasted longer than any referee before him. He officiated the 1996 World Cup of Hockey and the 1998 Winter Olympics. He is a shoo-in for the Hockey Hall of Fame.

But on Sunday, he was just a man doing what he loved one last time.

Fraser arrived at the arena two hours before game time wearing a sharp gray pinstripe suit and a purple tie. The previous night, he and his wife, Kathy, had hosted a barbecue at their home. The couple's seven children were there. Other officials working Fraser's final game brought their wives. Tears were shed.

Kathy made a small speech and presented her husband with a gold watch.

"I keep asking him how he's doing," she said the day before. "He says OK, but every opportunity he gets he talks hockey. That's something he never did before."

After the get-together, when the house fell quiet, Fraser packed his game bag and left it by the front door. He didn't sleep well.

"I was restless," he said.

On Sunday morning, he attended an early Mass at St. Andrew the Apostle Church in Gibbsboro and thought of his father, Hilton, who died in 2001.

Fraser was raised in Canada, in Sarnia, Ontario, a refinery town 60 miles north of Detroit, where he and neighborhood kids, including future NHL players Wayne Merrick and Pat "Whitey" Stapleton, played endless games in backyard rinks made with chicken wire.

Hilt Fraser played in the International Hockey League. He brought 15-month-old Kerry to practice and had the trainer lace him up.

"My father taught me to respect the game," Fraser said.

In the dressing room before Sunday's opening face-off, a procession of team staff, security guards, and other off-ice officials stopped by to congratulate Fraser on his career.

Auggie Conti, the timekeeper, asked him to sign a puck.

"This means a lot to me," Conti said.

Mark Messier, one of hockey's all-time greats and now a management official with the Rangers, also dropped in.

"The game will miss him for sure," Messier said.

Steve Coates, a Flyers commentator and longtime friend, did a televised interview.

Coates played in the IHL when Fraser began working professional minor-league games in 1973. Fraser was 21 then, short and scraggly haired and refereeing his way through towns like Flint, Fort Wayne, and Hershey. These were the NHL's Wild West days, when minor-league teams adopted the brute-force ways of the Broad Street Bullies.

"Players would threaten to shoot the puck at you," Fraser said.

During his first game in the minors, the Dayton Gems and Saginaw Gears cleared the benches.

"I didn't have a clue what to do," Fraser said.

Another time, a player dropped his gloves and charged Fraser.

"He wasn't coming to shake my hand," he said.

Fraser spent his nights in crummy hotels, recalling games in his head.

In 1979, the NHL absorbed the teams of the World Hockey Association. The expanded league needed good refs. Fraser worked his first NHL game in 1980, a contest between the Minnesota North Stars (now the Dallas Stars) and the Colorado Rockies, which would later become the New Jersey Devils.

On Sunday, Fraser and the officiating crew were suiting up when Fraser shared a text message he had received that morning from Wayne Gretzky.

"You have without question made the game better," the Great One wrote, signing it, simply, "99."

"Wilf Paiement sent you that?" joked a linesman, referring to a little-known player who wore the number.

Fraser stepped into the hall for some pregame stretching. He has taken his bruises over the years.

Five minutes into a 1982 game, he was struck in the ankle by a Paul Coffey slapshot that broke the tip of Fraser's fibula. In those years, only one referee worked the ice, so he finished the game.

"When I took off my skate, it looked like one of those big Halloween feet."

Another time, when a puck knocked him senseless, he was revived with smelling salts so he could continue.

Hockey season stretches from October to June.

"I missed an awful lot of my family's special moments," Fraser said. To show his children what Dad did, he took them on occasional road trips of their choosing.

When his son Ian was 3, he tried to hide his father's game bag in the basement to keep him from leaving.

"It broke my heart," Fraser said.

Fraser relocated his family to New Jersey from Canada in 1988. He bought former Flyers coach Mike Keenan's house in Voorhees, and then, a few years ago, moved to Hammonton. Other players spoke highly of the Philadelphia area, and there are five NHL arenas within 100 miles, he said.

Plus, he respects the fans.

"They let you know how they feel," he said.

Outside the Wachovia Center, fans had varied responses to word that Fraser was working such an important game.

"I'm glad it's him," said Joe Bogle, of York, Pa.

"Oh, God, not Fraser," said Erik Salzinger, of West Chester.

And this peach from Adam Greenberg of Cherry Hill:

"If we win, fine. But if we lose, it's his fault. Absolutely."

Fraser's most controversial moment came when he failed to call a high-sticking penalty on Gretzky in a pivotal 1993 playoff game between the Los Angeles Kings and Toronto Maple Leafs.

When it comes to the Flyers, Fraser most regrets disallowing a 1984 regular-season goal scored by Tim Kerr. He ruled that Kerr kicked the puck into the net with his skate. Kerr, usually a composed man, erupted, then apologized during his next shift on the ice.

"But I did just touch it with my stick," Kerr insisted. The game tape proved Kerr right.

"I always felt bad about that," Fraser said.

Kerr, who sells real estate at the Shore, doesn't recall the lost goal and holds no grudges.

"He was an honest ref," he said.

After Sunday's game, Fraser was changing back into his suit for a celebration his wife had organized at the Lexus Club in the Wachovia Center.

He's working on an autobiography and a book about his final season. And there's the Kerry Fraser Foundation, which will help troubled inner-city kids through sports. He looks forward to spending time with his children and grandchildren.

Fraser fixed his tie and entered the party. The large crowd applauded the end of a triumphant 34-year season.