Читать книгу Hope and Heartbreak in Toronto. Life as a Maple Leafs Fan онлайн

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Although admitting that it was a missed call all these years later, Fraser maintains that he never saw the infraction. There is one huge problem with his recollection: the replay clearly shows that he had an unobstructed view to the incident. Fraser never saw Gilmour being fouled because his head was turned toward the Leafs goal anticipating the puck arriving there. Gretzky and Gilmour were reacting to the puck being blocked before getting to the net but Fraser failed to pick up on it. To put that oversight into perspective, even Bob Cole, who has been missing broadcast calls in his own unique manner for the past thirty years, could see that the puck never made it to Potvin’s crease.

Fraser simply missed what at the very least should have been a minor penalty. That miss, combined with the official explanation from the NHL office, which was clearly at odds with the so-called following-through argument, burns the collective soul of Leafs Nation to this day.

Perhaps even more telling was the look on Gretzky’s face at the time. Like all superstar athletes, Gretzky had an understated swagger. When he was on the ice, his face rarely changed from that of a determined, singularly focused athlete. But the look on Gretzky’s face as Fraser and his two confederates deliberated was more like a worried schoolboy than a confident superstar. The only other expression that approached the one Gretzky wore for a brief moment that night came almost five years later when he was left on the bench during a shootout at the 1998 Winter Olympics as Canada lost to the Czech Republic.