The Final Call by Kerry Fraser Page A

against Al MacInnis, and got a little help from his best friend, the goalpost, when a Joey Mullen slapper blasted past him, only to clang off the iron.
    Jacques Demers credited Bernie Federko as his on-ice leader and a player with a special ability to do something that could change a game. And Bernie got it done for his coach once again by setting up the play that that ended the game.
    Ken Wilson called the play this way: “Here’s Ramage, for Federko too far … Federko steals the puck from Reinhart … over to Hunter, who shoots … blocked—Wickenheiser scores! Doug Wickenheiser! The Blues pull it off and it’s unbelievable!”
    Federko had snatched the puck off defenceman Paul Reinhart’s skate just outside the Calgary blue line and broke in on goal from the left side. He saw Mark Hunter on the right wing and slid a perfect pass across for a one-time shot. Goalie Mike Vernon moved across with the pass, and Hunter’s shot was blocked by a sliding Flames defenceman as Vernon went down as well. The rebound went right to a trailing Wickenheiser, who was moving into the slot. Wick fired a shot into the unattended goal for what many consider the greatest moment in St. Louis Blues history.
    As Huck, Scampy, and I followed the disappointed Calgary Flames team off the ice, we entered our dressing room with a sense of accomplishment that we had stood up to the test that had been sent our way. When penalties needed to be called, they were. When courage had been demanded of us, we spit in the face of intimidation and threats. And finally, at the end of the night, we’d simply done our jobs to the very best of our ability. To top it off, we had just witnessed a Monday-Night Miracle. Who could ask for more?
    A short time afterward, a baby-faced Doug Gilmour, then just 22, but a player Jacques Demers had already recognized as a tremendous leader, was interviewed. “I just kinda sit there and, you know, think back to myself that, you know … 
how did we do it?
Somebody must have been looking out for us, you know? Something was going on.”
    In a city named after a saint, could that something have been a miracle? Most of the 17,801 in the stands that night still think so, and so does one referee!

    For nearly a quarter of a century, I wondered if my message for Jacques Demers at the end of the second period was ever delivered by Rob Ramage. As I prepared for this book I spoke with Jacques, for whom I have the utmost respect, not only as a tremendous coach and motivator, but even more so as the good, kind, caring human being that he is. The world would be a better place if there were more Jacques Demerses around.
    He told me he did get the message. He knew that his team had some strong leaders, including Sutter, Ramage, and Gilmour. Jacques’s team had accomplished a great deal that season even though they were underdogs—and underfinanced under the ownership of Harry Ornest. The work ethic that he promoted and his players displayed had brought the fans back into the building. Jacques did not want to disappoint those fans and end their season the way the second period had finished.
    These are some of the points Jacques told me he touched on during that second intermission: the team was trying to do too much and had put themselves in the position they were in; he appealed to them not to take any more stupid penalties; he sensed that everybody was frustrated—even he had lost some control; they needed to get back in the game early; and they needed to score a goal every five minutes.
    Jacques also told me that, aside from Game Two of the 1993 Stanley Cup final, which the Montreal Canadiens won in overtime after tying the game while Marty McSorley of Los Angeles sat in the penalty box for using an illegal stick, the Monday-NightMiracle was the greatest game he’d ever coached. Call it coincidence, call it fate, but it was a tremendous honour for me to have been the referee in both games that the Honourable Jacques Demers,