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

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During the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast of the game, analyst Harry Neale asked, “Wouldn’t this be something if Wayne Gretzky was thrown out for a high stick?” It would have been something all right, but Fraser made no call. And so it turned out to be nothing and Gretzky remained on the ice without so much as a minor penalty as Gilmour went to the Leafs dressing room to be stitched up.

With seconds left in that same Kings power play, the game’s greatest-ever player took a nice feed from Luc Robitaille and deposited the puck behind Potvin to win the game.

The Kings lived to fight another night and sent the series back to Toronto for the deciding Game 7. Two nights later Gretzky scored three more times to clinch the series for the Kings with another 5–4 win. Gretzky later called it the best game of his incomparable career.

For the Leafs, their best opportunity to win the Stanley Cup since 1967 swung, literally, on a missed call. And by a man who, for all his later regret, gave off an air of indifference, an unspoken “Do you really think that I, a man of such brilliance, could miss something so important?”