Seeing the Ice

By Perry Barber

The atmosphere inside New York’s fabled Madison Square Garden on a frigid Sunday night in January is frostier than the temperature outside. The Rangers have come out hard and intense against the opposing Flyers, the noisy boom of bodies slamming into boards cracking and echoing across the chilly arena. Rangers captain Mark Messier passes the puck with deceptive nonchalance, tensing minutely before flicking it like a bullet across the ice to a teammate who scoots in ghost-like, out of nowhere, to receive the pass.

Kerry Fraser sees all of that as he skates in perfect sync with the action. Even the microscopic pressure of Messier’s stick signaling his release of the puck does not escape Fraser’s attention. He stays with the play but never gets in the way, leaping nimbly upward and back in graceful arcs, curling out to extricate himself fearlessly from converging masses of stick, steel and sweaty, swirling humanity, then settling in, hovering smoothly as he watches what happens without interrupting the flow or direction of the event. From the moment he first dropped the puck to start the game and skated backward out of the ensuing melee as swiftly as a hummingbird in flight, Fraser is tuned in to everything that goes on. "My senses become like a radar so when there’s movement I know what’s coming," he explains. "My eyes are shifting, my head is moving and I can see everything within my entire field of vision even while I’m looking straight ahead. That heightened sense of awareness allows me to read and react to the play, not just where it is now but where it’s going to be." To Fraser, it is the essence of officiating. He calls it, "Seeing the ice."

Sprung from a line of hardy Canadians, Fraser has seen a lot of ice in his life. He grew up in Sarnia, Ont., the older of two sons of Hilton and Barbara. Hilt was a rugged sort who built boats and fished when he wasn’t playing in the International Hockey League, back in the days when there were only six NHL teams and the IHL was a premier minor league. He settled in Sarnia, a little more than an hour from Detroit, where he coached Kerry and his younger brother Rick as they came of hockey-playing age. In Canada, that means 15 months old. That’s how young Kerry was when he started skating – one tiny, determined infant using a chair to balance himself on the ice. The Frasers had a rink in their back yard where the two boys would skate for hours, then break for supper by hoisting themselves under Hilt’s bulging biceps, one under each arm, so he could carry them inside without their skates touching the floor. Barbara, the consummate hockey mom, would spread newspaper under the table so the blades and melting ice wouldn’t do any damage. When they finished, Hilt would pick the brothers up and haul them back outside to resume skating.

Once, he hid Kerry in a stick bag to get him safely past the irate mother of a teenage opponent, the dirtiest player on a team that played dirty in general. With two minutes left in the game Hilt sent in Kerry, his filial and fiery enforcer, to send a message to the young thug. The mother of the object of said message took violent and opprobrious exception to its delivery and was now waiting outside the locker room, steamed, for its dutiful, disheveled messenger. Hilt zipped up 16-year-old Kerry inside the stick bag and carried him out slung over his shoulder, right past the unsuspecting nose of the outraged mom. "I held my breath in there," Fraser recalls, laughing.

Hilt has been gone more than a year now. He died, sort of romantically, felled quietly by a heart attack moments after someone snapped the last photograph anyone would ever take of him as he sat on the deck of a boat he built when Kerry was five. Barbara still lives in Sarnia, and watches Kerry’s games via satellite dish. She’ll phone Kathy, Kerry’s devoted spouse of 16 years, and ask if Kerry made a good call that night, unflinchingly proud of her boy. The familial bonds instilled in him as a child keep Kerry grounded as an adult, offering him a strong spiritual center of gravity and security he now happily attaches to his own children, an illustrious brood of seven. There are three boys, his from a former marriage; and four girls, the three oldest, Kathy’s from a previous marriage also; and Kara, 12, daughter of their joint union.

Fraser’s professional accomplishments are stellar and myriad. He has fashioned an enduring 26-year career in the NHL; he is often pointed to as the league’s top referee, acknowledged as such by players, coaches, broadcasters, fellow refs and even fans; he refereed his first Stanley Cup in 1985 when he was only 32 years old on his way to 11 more years of appearing in the finals; he worked the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan, and the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. As of mid-February, he had 1,450 regular season NHL games under his belt. The record for a referee is 1,475, held by Hall-of-Fame referee and current NHL Director of Officiating Andy Van Hellemond. With all of that and more to glorify his legacy, Fraser feels more pride in his children’s accomplishments than he does in his own.

He and Kathy have unapologetically constructed a shrine to their children’s athletic and academic successes downstairs in their airy, artfully appointed New Jersey home. The walls and shelves of the basement are covered by hundreds of plaques, trophies, medals, photos, diplomas, certificates and other displays memorializing the talents of each child. Fraser’s oldest son, Ryan, is even following in his father’s footsteps. He’s currently a pro referee in the East Coast Hockey League, hoping to make it to the NHL someday. Fraser’s oldest daughter, Marcie, went to college on a Division I field hockey scholarship, but she married an official, Harry Dumas, a minor league hockey referee who has worked a number of NHL games, once even with his father-in-law. The energy of hard work and high achievement is potent, and Kerry and Kathy bask, deservedly, in its glow.

They are, remarkably, contented grandparents of a little boy now, born in the spring of 2002 by Kathy’s oldest daughter. Kerry turned 50 years old last May but he still has a baby face.

He hasn’t come by his rewards lightly, even if they have arrived quickly and with increasing frequency since the first game he refereed for a men’s industrial league when he was all of 13, just to earn some cash and acquire extra skating experience. He was full of an adolescent bluster, often misinterpreted as cockiness, that was belied by his relatively small stature (Fraser is 5’7"). "Because of my size, in the athletic arena I’ve always had to fight for everything I got, particularly when I was younger," says Fraser. "So what has helped me in many ways to actually become successful, in other situations could be detracting. I’ve learned to control my anger, first by becoming aware of it and its genesis, then by practicing a process of constant self-evaluation and reflection. I’ve used my strengths to overcome my deficiencies because I know what I take to the officiating arena are my character, my integrity, the things that make me what I am, especially at times of crisis."

Even at this stage in his career, the pinnacle of his profession, Fraser still experiences those times of crisis to which he alludes. He has found a way to successfully achieve détente with players and coaches and lower the level of excitement during a contest without compromising its character or pace. "There is a spike of adrenaline that can lead to cottonmouth, to muscle tension, to a loss of ability to communicate, to understand or be understood," he explains. "The ‘fight or flight’ syndrome is a very difficult thing to master because we are built to defend ourselves. As an official, you must overcome human tendencies. The body has to become an internal and external thermometer, able to feel the temperature rising within itself before it pops. In order for a game to function properly, an official has to provide a safe environment in which the players can perform. The rules are what we use to provide that safe environment where we become part of the solution rather than of the problem. I’ve learned that when I am in control of my own emotions and actions, no matter how riled up I feel, I can always control the situation much better if I do not allow my state of excitement to gain mastery over me."

Fraser’s ability to analyze the technicalities of physical and spiritual acts committed daily upon NHL ice, then translate and articulate them with fluency to colleagues and adversaries alike, has elevated him to the niche he now occupies in NHL lore, one he has meticulously carved out for himself with loving care, the same way his daddy built boats. In that manner, he honors his father. He remains a student of the game and seeks every day to improve the skills required of him during an NHL contest. He applies a philosophy of openness to knowledge, technical improvement and technology in his continuing efforts to upgrade every aspect of his officiating.

"I learned a lot about the physical movements that transform observation into action by applying a formula of speed, time and distance I developed after studying Wayne Gretzky. I learned equally as much about the mental aspects of officiating from Scotty Morrison, who was referee-in-chief of the NHL when I was a young, up-and-coming referee. My progression from playing Junior Hockey to refereeing in the NHL was so rapid and unobstructed, and I was so focused on learning and adapting, that I barely had time to adjust my attitude. After a conversation with Scotty early in my career, a year-end evaluation during which I asked him point-blank what I needed to do to get better, I came away with the understanding that I was often perceived as arrogant when in fact I just felt confident. For instance, in my youthful eagerness to impress, I showed up at my first NHL officials’ camp at 6:30 in the morning, when it was actually scheduled for that evening, 12 hours later. I got up at three in the morning to be able to make it on time! I was 21, full of myself, and I sported a Beatles haircut that Frank Udvari, the Hall-of-Fame referee who sponsored me, strongly advised me to get cut." No such advisory has been issued in a long time; a Fraser trademark is the flowing, wavy locks that set off his relaxed countenance in a way fans and hockey journalists love to both admire and mock. Fraser handles the attention, adverse or adoring, with equal aplomb. He understands he does not referee in a vacuum.

"Obviously I don’t wear a helmet," he says, "so people see the hair and it’s become sort of a trademark. Kathy was the one who changed my look. I remember when I showed up the first time with the new look; one guy looked at me twice because he didn’t recognize me at first and then he said, ‘Holy f––, Fraser! Did you come over here in a convertible?"

Only a handful of NHL officials go helmetless these days. In the 1980s, the NHL made it a rule that all new officials coming into the league must wear headgear, but the officials who predate that rule still have the choice of wearing a helmet or not. "I tried wearing a helmet for about four weeks in 1992 after (then-Los Angeles Kings Coach) Tommy Webster threw a stick at me from the bench. Flying pucks I can usually anticipate, but stuff flying from someplace like that made me think maybe it’s not a bad idea to protect my head a little more."

Fraser soon abandoned the headgear when it interfered with his game awareness. "I couldn’t sense anything," he says. "That ability to project ahead of the game – seeing the ice – that radar, was gone. Same thing happened in Nagano (during the Olympics) because they made us wear a helmet and a visor. Talk about bottling things up! I had a deadened sense."

Watch any great official in any sport. The best share common traits, and one of the most telling is how each will handle situations and players during volatile episodes. Skating dexterity and instant rules recall are handy tools, but what sets the great officials apart from equally talented colleagues is always their ability to handle situations appropriately, with decorum and dispatch. "We employ a wide latitude of judgment because we are in the entertainment business. People want to see a game that is fast-paced, intense, with good body contact. We don’t want to kill that game or destroy its spirit. We don’t want to take the heartbeat out of the game. So we allow it to be played on the edge, at its highest level, without any interference from us. The energy created by the players is transmitted to the crowd and to us, the referees and linesmen, and it goes back and forth. What we strive for is to work in an atmosphere of teamwork and controlled aggression."

"Seeing the ice" is Kerry Fraser’s great talent, the gift that elevates him to a position he occupies with pride and humility. "The game allows me to do good things, for my family and for other people. It offers me a secure and safe forum from which I can accomplish good and useful things, and I don’t ever take it for granted."

Seeing the ice is a device of Fraser’s own invention and ingenuity, the product of his drive to learn, succeed and do good things. It is the end result of standing in front of a full-length mirror thousands of times with a whistle stuffed full of Kleenex so the sound wouldn’t disturb anyone, watching his reflection totally without vanity to see how he looked calling penalties. It is understanding that the image he presents matters, and that it can only improve with study, diligent practice and application. "I’m taking still pictures in my mind all the time, freeze-framing the ice at the moment I do a ‘read.’ The focus of my attention can change so I don’t want to tunnel in. If a player is not in a foul potential, I don’t have to focus on him. I might broaden my field of vision by withdrawing, or quickly shift and narrow its scope to zero in on another situation that needs attention: two players in confrontation, or just the potential for conflict. I take one freeze-frame picture after another for sorting and filing in my brain. Based on the formula I’ve devised, using speed, time and distance as factors, I know where to look and when. I see things down the road, the next move on the chessboard, the next series of moves. All of that shapes my field of vision and renders it virtually limitless. That is what I use to read a play and react to it successfully."

Success, influence, wealth, wisdom, good hotels. Those are the by-products or trappings of any enduring, productive professional lifespan. Fraser measures the rewards of a Hall of Fame-worthy career with a slightly more profound yardstick. He sees the ice, and in its reflection he sees himself, his family, all he has worked for and seeks to nurture and protect in the name of his father and mother, wife, children and grandchild. Those are what matter most to him now as he glides effortlessly across the ice, totally focused on the play in front of him but seeing much more than that, flashing backward with hummingbird speed, leaping out of the way of the onrushing mass of stick, steel and sweaty, swirling, humanity.

Perry Barber is a baseball umpire and freelance writer. She lives in New York City.