Kerry Fraser
Episode 116
19 APR 2021
An amazing conversion story filled with a series of mystical events – not to mention a serious medical diagnosis – from a man who officiated over 1,900 regular season games, the most in NHL history, plus an additional 261 Stanley Cup playoff games and even two NHL All-Star Games and one Winter Olympics. “Referee” magazine selected him as one of the top ten officials of the century in any sport. Following his retirement, he stayed involved in the game by participating in a blog for TSN called, “C’mon Ref!” and by serving as an analyst on TSN’s hockey highlight show.
Notable guest quotes:
“I went to Sunday school in the early years, probably to age six.”
“This is Holy Spirit talk. When I was in Grade Two… in my public school… We used to be able to, back then you could say a morning prayer, and we would do the Our Father… And I can vividly recall sitting in my little desk and saying the word ‘God’ and … my body chilled, the little hairs on my arm stood up. In hindsight, as I look back on that, He was touching me, He was calling me… He, through my baptism, was with me and in me and wanted me to do certain things.”
“(Refereeing) is not something for the faint of heart, shall we say. But boy I’ll tell ya’, it was a great career. I came in with Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier and those guys, and I left with Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin – saw all the stars of the game in between. But along that path… I learned a lot more about myself than I knew about the game of hockey.”
“I didn’t have the courage to back away from walking down the aisle… I knew I was making a mistake… In any event, three beautiful young boys were born of that 13-year marriage. They were my life.”
“At the end of that 13-year… marriage, I was morally bankrupt. I had a hole in my heart and I just didn’t know how to fill it.”
“Where there’s light, as we know, there’s darkness. And some of the darkness (as an NHL referee) was on the personal attacks directed at me, on the ice, or, they were directed at other players, that I had to adjudicate.”
“(my wife) got on her knees in front of the little statue — and (she’s) a cradle Catholic — she got on her knees in front of the statue of her Blessed Mother that she had from childhood, she was sobbing and pleading to the Blessed Mother, ‘Please help this family. I love my husband. I love my child. Please help us. You’re a mother. You’re our mother. Help us’.”
“He talked about St. James over at Medjugorje and the mystical experience that everyone — the appearance, apparitions of the Blessed Mother. And it was just so fascinating… I wanted to tape this beautiful message that he talks about.”
“She laid a… rosary in my hand… and a charge went through me and I said, ‘This is it’.”
“Things happened very quickly. And my heart transformed. It was me… that needed the help… And it absolutely changed my heart.”
“That start of the season, in early October, I had my first mystical experience on the drive to Pittsburgh. That was my road to Damascus. And I’ll tell you, it was so powerful, God revealed things to me in a miracle of the sun that appeared for at least 15 minutes while I was in rush hour traffic driving to Pittsburgh for the opening of the season.”
“The Holy Spirit was utilizing me and the opportunities of travel that I had. I started going to daily Mass. Every day, no matter where I was, I went to morning Mass.”
“God was touching me with His hand. He loves me that much, a sinner that didn’t deserve it. And He loved me that much that He would touch me.”
Related link:
Kerry’s book “The Final Call: Hockey Stories from a Legend in Stripes“
