Late Start, Early Passion
Don Koharski is a throwback, a holdover from a time when succeeding at the highest level of the sport was as much about tenacity and resourcefulness as it was knowledge of the rulebook.
Koharski thrived in that era, working 11 Stanley Cup finals in a span of 19 years. But in the post-lockout NHL, he is discovering new ways of doing things, working to unlearn habits ingrained after a lifetime in the sport.
As Koharski has evolved as an official, he has also grown as a man. By his own admission, there have been occasions when his passion for life and for the game of hockey led to lapses in judgment — on the ice and off. And while he may be in the twilight of his on-ice career he is, at age 51, perhaps just reaching his prime as a man.
Koharski got a late start in hockey. He spent his childhood on a farm outside of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, near Halifax. His father was in the Navy and skates weren’t in the family budget so Koharski started out playing pond hockey, wearing boots. When he was 11 or 12, the family moved to the community of Shannon Park, which was located on a Canadian military base and it was there that he put on skates for the first time.
Like so many other Canadian boys before and since, he was hooked. “I lived at the arena,” he says.
Koharski played a variety of sports including hockey in Shannon Park but although he later received a scholarship offer to play hockey at the university level, he was never a real prospect because he had started skating so late in life.
“The other guys had about an eight-year head start,” he says.
He spent a lot of time on the ice, however, helping coach youth hockey teams or just for the fun of being on skates.
His first chance to officiate came about by happenstance when he was “13 or 14” and some players in a local men’s league asked him and a friend to go on the ice with them, drop pucks for faceoffs and call offsides violations. At the end of the night, the players gave Koharski and his friend $10 apiece.
More than 35 years later there is still joy in Koharski’s voice when he thinks about that night.
“It wasn’t about the $10,” he says, “It was about the skating. It was so cool that we could still be a part of the game when we weren’t playing.”
After that experience, Koharski started refereeing minor hockey at the local rink, usually on skates but sometimes in just his boots if necessary. Even as a teenager he loved officiating and loved contributing to his community. “We were all Navy people,” he says. “We had everything in common. It was very cool to grow up there.”
When he was 15, Koharski was honored for his service to youth sports in Shannon Park. In lieu of a trophy he was given a check for $50 — to use toward attending officiating school. The next summer, he was off to suburban Toronto to pursue the passion that had taken hold of his life.
“That was pretty overwhelming at the time,” Koharski says, “leaving the province and leaving a small Navy base to go to another province.”
Though Koharski didn’t know it until he arrived, one of the camp directors was former NHL referee and Hockey Hall of Famer Red Storey, who was scouting prospects for the upstart World Hockey Association (WHA). Koharski returned to the camp each summer through his high school career and after graduating from high school in 1975 turned down a chance to go to college and play hockey. Instead he signed on with the WHA as a linesman at age 18.
“My dad said, ‘If you go to school, I know you’re going to quit when the hockey season ends,’” Koharski recalls.
The father knew his son well.
Koharski worked more than 100 games in the WHA that year, but two franchises in the financially strapped league folded during the season. The next year, not as many officials were needed and Koharski was let go.
He returned to Dartmouth, took a job as a milkman and worked as a linesman in the American Hockey League (AHL).
From Linesman to Referee
Then and now, AHL linesmen work close to home and Koharski handled every home game for the league’s Halifax franchise that year. The NHL office liked his work and in 1977 hired him as a linesman.
Koharski was not quite 22 years old and working alongside men he had watched on Hockey Night in Canada telecasts back home in Shannon Park, men like John McCauley, Bob Myers, Ron Wicks and future Hall of Famer Andy Van Hellemond.
“I actually was asking some of them for their autographs,” Koharski says. “It was awesome.”
At that point, virtually all of Koharski’s experience at the upper levels of the sport had been as a linesman, but his bosses in the NHL asked him to think about the referee position and Koharski agreed to give it a try. He started the 1979-80 season dividing his time between refereeing in the minor league and calling the lines in the NHL. The schedule was hectic, but it gave him a chance to decide if he liked refereeing, which he did, and working as an NHL linesman allowed him the opportunity to pick the brains of the veteran referees he was sharing the ice with each night.
“They were great to me,” Koharski says of the veterans. “Not most of them, all of them.
“In between periods I would say to them, ‘I agree with the call, but what were you thinking and what led up to that?’ They’d say, ‘Well, I was starting to feel the (tension) build and it was a good one to get at that time of the game.’
“I just learned so much from our referees as I sat there as a young linesman. I made them my mentors, all of them.”
“I just learned so much from our referees as I sat there as a young linesman. I made them my mentors, all of them.”
Koharski’s mentor-in-chief was McCauley, who later became his boss as the NHL’s director of officiating.
“He was unbelievable, the rapport he had with players, coaches and team management, he could do no wrong,” says Koharski. “He could miss 35 calls, and at the end of the game everybody was happy. When he just gave somebody a 10-minute misconduct, guys would come out of the penalty box and tap John on the ass with the stick and say, ‘Sorry, John.’ That was just phenomenal to me.”
At the midpoint of the 1979-80 season Koharski, who had just turned 24, was asked to start refereeing full time, which meant that, although he would be working under an NHL contract, he would be returning to the minors with no guarantee of getting back to the big league.
“I remember saying to my wife, ‘We have a decision to make here,’ Koharski says. “In five or six years there could be five or six guys retiring. I’ll only be 30 then; that will give me an opportunity to work full time 15 or 16 years in the National Hockey League (as a referee). I liked my chances of getting back in the NHL in that window.”
Koharski’s last game as a linesman was on New Year’s Eve 1979 when he worked a game in Buffalo between the Sabres and a touring team from the Soviet Union.
For the next year-and-a-half he continued his travels through hockey’s backwaters, working in an assortment of minor leagues, until in November 1981 he got a call from McCauley, who by then was the NHL’s assistant director of officiating, giving him his first NHL assignment as a referee. It was between the Detroit Red Wings and the Washington Capitals in Washington on Nov. 18, 1981.
Koharski had been working the referee position at the professional level for just two years, only a year-and-a-half on a full-time basis.
“I wanted to make sure they made the right phone call and had the right guy,” he says. “To get a game (in the NHL) that quickly, without a whole lot of refereeing experience was pretty cool.”
A Hard-Ass Referee but a Player’s Referee
Some referees in those days whistled only the most obvious infractions while others stuck more closely to the letter of the law. Some officials maintained a placid demeanor on the ice, while others wore their emotions and the love of their profession on their sweaters along with the NHL crest.
Koharski fell into the latter category, a self-described “hard-ass referee but a player’s referee.” When he began refereeing full time in the NHL, he was just shy of 29 and wanted to project the image of a battle-tested veteran, which is why he grew the mustache that was his trademark for years.
“(With a mustache) I could look older and could present myself as a more mature, older looking referee and get that respect and put the fear of God into them … or put the fear of the referee into them,” says Koharski.
Admittedly, Koharski had a bit of a feisty streak, but his bosses liked his work. In his first year as a full-time referee he worked three rounds of playoff games, including the conference finals. The next year he worked the first of three consecutive Stanley Cup finals.
From time to time however, Koharski’s passion for his work boiled over. “I had many bad nights,” he says. “Many nights where I’m saying, ‘I owe that guy an apology,’ and I would apologize to that player for losing my cool and tell them, ‘I got very emotional; I shouldn’t have sworn at you.’
“I think you’re a better person, a better official, a better man if you can own up to an error or a mistake you made, especially in our industry.”
“I think you’re a better person, a better official, a better man if you can own up to an error or a mistake you made, especially in our industry.”
The Doughnut Incident
Perhaps the most memorable incident of Koharski’s career occurred in May 1988, following the fourth game of a playoff series between the Boston Bruins and the host New Jersey Devils.
In part due to a pair of Boston power-play goals, the Devils fell behind, 4-0, and eventually lost, 6-1.
Following the game, Devils’ Coach Jim Schoenfeld confronted Koharski in the hallway leading to the locker rooms. The two jostled briefly and the confrontation ended with Schoenfeld hollering, “Have another doughnut, you fat pig!” as Koharski made his way to his own dressing room.
Schoenfeld was suspended by the league for his outburst, but the Devils went to court and sought an injunction to prevent the suspension from taking effect. When it was granted, Koharski’s peers in the NHL Officials Association refused to work the fifth game of the series and the league had to scramble to find replacements to take their places.
The incident has followed Koharski ever since, in no small measure because it was videotaped by a television crew and was soon being seen all over North America.
“I wouldn’t have handled anything differently,” Koharski says now, “because I handled it the way it had to be handled. We waited on the ice for five, six, eight minutes, whatever it was so the players would get out of the hallway and the coach would leave.
“Back then security wasn’t what it is now. They took it seriously but times are different. We just thought the coaching staff was gone; they reappeared unfortunately and we had the situation that played out.”
Koharski says he is asked about the incident every day when he is on the road, but what has been forgotten is that he was assigned to referee the seventh and deciding game of that same series.
“If anybody thought I was going to screw (the Devils) I’m sure John McCauley would not have put me in game seven,” he says.
Hockey fans might also be surprised to learn that after the season, Schoenfeld and Koharski sat down over a sandwich and a beer and talked things out. The two men still cross paths from time to time and Schoenfeld has taken part in the charity golf outing that Koharski hosts each year.
Crossroads
Koharski finished the 1988 season by working his third consecutive Stanley Cup final. But he was finding it difficult to distinguish the admittedly thin line that separates confident from cocky.
“I was the cock of the walk,” he says, “I was young and I was full of confidence. There were probably times when I went over the line. But thank God for guys like John McCauley and Bob Myers. They were able to sit and talk to me as a friend and say, ‘Whoa, slow down.’”
A year after the “Have another doughnut” incident, Koharski was forced to take a hard look at where his life and career were headed.
In May 1989 he was in Philadelphia to work the sixth game of a playoff series between the Flyers and the Montreal Canadiens.
The night before the game, Koharski and Wayne Bonney were relaxing at a local watering hole and stayed out past the league’s 11 p.m. curfew. The league didn’t check on its officials, but word got out when a caller to a local sports talk radio station the next day mentioned that he had been chatting in the bar with Koharski “at 12:30 in the morning.”
Koharski and Bonney worked the game as scheduled, but word of the incident reached the ears of Flyers management, which complained to the league office and the two officials were called on the carpet.
Immediately after the game, Koharski was told that he was going to work the Stanley Cup finals for the fourth year in a row, but instead he was pulled off the series and fined.
Additionally, he and Bonney were demoted to the minor leagues the first two weeks of the 1989-90 season — for a minor-league salary.
After shooting to the top of his profession, Koharski, at age 33, was at a crossroads, personally and professionally.
“It was just a bad decision on my part,” he says. “I have no one else to blame. I was a grown adult and made a decision to stay (in the bar) when I shouldn’t have.”
What followed in the days ahead was a serious self-evaluation of his career and his life. He also had to deal with the loss of his mentor, McCauley, who died from complications from gall bladder surgery at age 44, less than a month after the incident in Philadelphia.
“I think Donald took ownership on a lot of things,” his wife, Susan, says. “We walked through it together as a family, all four of us.”
Susan and Don Koharski have been together for some 38 years and married for 28. They met as teenagers when Susan was babysitting for one of Koharski’s neighbors.
When Don started working games at the local rink, Susan would often be waiting for him with a hot dog and a soda between games. She has been with him all the years since, through good times and bad.
“I believe in teamwork,” she says. “We all have strengths and we all have weaknesses. What I’m lacking in a certain area, Donald has, and what he’s lacking, I have. It’s teamwork, it’s balance and it’s worked for us.”
In the aftermath of the curfew incident, Don credits Susan for helping him make important changes in his life, including giving up alcohol.
“There were a couple attitude adjustments,” Don says. “A couple come-to-Jesus meetings about where my life and career were heading. She was there for that, to keep me humble and keep me in line. She’s my best friend.”
In the last year or so Koharski has occasionally permitted himself a glass of red wine but hasn’t touched beer or hard liquor since that night in Philadelphia nearly 18 years ago.
“I reflected back with my wife on times I did get in trouble in the business,” he says. “I always seemed to have a beer in my hand when I’d get in trouble, so I said, ‘You know what? Maybe it’s time I started taking care of myself a little better if I want to stay in this business.’”
Adapting Again
After serving his “sentence” in the minor leagues, Koharski returned to the NHL and if he wasn’t quite so visible as he had been before, he realized more than ever what his career meant to him. “I think when you’re younger, you take too many things for granted,” he says, “at least I did. As you get older, the passion for the game grows, the respect for the company, the National Hockey League, strengthens. You feel privileged every day you go to work.”
As the years have passed, Koharski has grown into the role of an elder statesman among the league’s officiating corps. Midway through the 1998-99 season the NHL began using two referees per game on an experimental basis; starting with that year’s playoffs the system was made permanent. That meant that the league’s veteran officials not only had to learn to work with a partner but also refine their skating skills, specifically become more proficient at skating backward, which is vitally necessary in the two-man system of coverage.
“We had some guys who had a tough time making that transition,” Koharski says, “because they were forwards their entire careers (as players) and never skated backward in their lives. It was a heck of an adjustment.”
Koharski continued to receive some choice assignments. By the end of the 2004 season he had worked the conference finals for 20 consecutive seasons. Along the way he also worked two Canada Cup tournaments and the 2004 World Cup, the last major hockey event before the work stoppage that forced the cancellation of the 2004-05 season.
Family, Legacy and One Last Goal
The Koharski’s two sons are both grown. Jamie is 24 and refereeing in the AHL after refereeing his first game at the age of nine. He’s hoping to reach the NHL himself one day.
Kevin, now 22, played some youth hockey and briefly tried officiating before deciding to focus on his education. He’s now in the process of completing requirements for his degree in communications from St. Leo University in Florida, near his parents’ home.
“As passionate as my father is about the sport of hockey, he’s 10 times more passionate about our family,” Jamie says. “I think he’s even more proud of my brother for being in school and being the first Koharski to graduate from a university than he is of me for working pro hockey.”
There are signs that the end of Koharski’s career is in sight. Last season he returned to work following the NHL work stoppage.
In April 2006 he refereed his 1,500th NHL game. His refereeing partner that night was Wes McCauley, John’s son, whom Koharski regards almost as a son.
But his streak of appearances in the conference finals came to an end, as he failed to advance past the second round of the playoffs.
“I was disappointed,” Koharski says, “but in the same breath, you’re happy for the young guys who get an opportunity to go three rounds because when I did my three rounds there was always a senior referee, a Bruce Hood, a Bob Myers, a Ron Wicks, who didn’t get to go.
“That just brings it back to the reality of my age, where the league is going and what they have to do to continue to be successful and give the young guys their experience.”
Koharski won’t say how much longer he plans to keep working, but says he has a retirement date in mind.
Before then he has one last on-ice milestone he would like to reach, one that has nothing to do with another trip to the Stanley Cup finals. Sometime before he retires he would like to work a professional game with his son.
“If I can get to a couple training camps with my son, if he makes it,” Don says, “and do a couple of exhibition games in the NHL with him as my partner, I could die and go to heaven.”
“I can’t even begin to think about how that would feel,” Jamie Koharski says. “That would be the ultimate, it would be a dream come true.”
For her part, Susan Koharski sees her friend and partner of nearly four decades and looks forward to the years ahead. “I look at Donald now and he is the man I want to sit out in the backyard with,” she says. “Grow old with and sit out in a rocking chair in the backyard. He’ll smoke a cigar and we’ll both enjoy a nice glass of wine.
“He’s a good man.”
