They were set to hang Mike Vernon's No. 30 jersey from the rafters at the Pengrowth Saddledome Tuesday night, which was singularly appropriate in some ways. So many times during Vernon's career with the Calgary Flames, which featured two trips to the Stanley Cup final and more wins (259) than any other goaltender in franchise history, some of the local boo-birds would have just as soon seen his sweater raised to the roof, with Vernon inside.
Vernon, a hometown boy who made good, had the same sort of uneasy relationship with Calgary fans that Grant Fuhr did in Edmonton too. Unlike Fuhr, who once called the Oilers' fans "jerks" after they gave him a particularly rough time of it, Vernon generally took the high road. For a baby-faced 5-foot-9 inch goaltender that played an old-school stand-up style and relied on his quickness and athleticism, Vernon had the thickest skin imaginable.
Some cities are tougher on goaltenders than others. With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, all those people that booed Vernon then presumably understand now how much of a difference he made in turning the Flames' franchise around. Until Vernon arrived in 1986, no one that came before him — from Pat Riggin to Don Edwards to Rejean Lemelin — had any success at all against the greatest collection of offensive talent ever assembled. That was the Gretzky gang of the mid-1980s, which won five Stanley Cups in seven years (the last one, with his Wayne-ness exiled to Los Angeles). Those Oilers' teams routinely piled up 400 goal-regular season and Vernon's Flames had the fortune (misfortune?) of facing them eight times every regular season and usually in the second round of every playoff series.
Of all the things that Vernon accomplished in his career — a second Stanley Cup championship with the Detroit Red Wings, a Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP — perhaps the most extraordinary (and the thing that may one day get him into the Hockey Hall Of Fame) is that head-to-head, against the two greatest goalies of his generation, Fuhr and Patrick Roy, Vernon had a winning record against both (18-8-8 against Fuhr, 14-9-2 against Roy).
When the game was on the line, Vernon had the ability to raise the level of his play — and no one knows that better than defenceman Al MacInnis, his former teammate in Calgary. MacInnis won just the one championship in his career — in 1989 — but there was a brief moment, in the middle of the first round, when he saw even that one slipping away. That was in Game 7 of a series against the Vancouver Canucks, in which Calgary was heavily favored to win. In overtime, the Canucks had three glorious chances to win — one by Tony Tanti, one by Stan Smyl, one by Petri Skriko — but Smyl on a breakaway is the one MacInnis remembers best.
"It's because I was the one chasing him," said MacInnis.
But Vernon made the saves and Calgary went on to lose just three more games in three rounds to become the first-and-only visiting team to receive the Stanley Cup on Montreal Forum ice. That reception — kind and warm — is among the many memories that have been playing across Vernon's mind in the days prior to the ceremony.
To a man, his teammates on that '89 team believe they are wearing Stanley Cup rings because of Vernon's play in goal. They are equally unsure why he could never win those fans over, at least not in his playing days.
"At the time, Calgary was half the size it is now," said Colin Patterson, Vernon's road roommate for all the years they played together. "It was a much tighter community, especially the hockey community — and a lot of people played against Mike growing up. It's those people that would say, 'my kid was better than Mike because he had a 3.20 goals-against average in tyke.' You ran into that everywhere. I'm sure, for every player who's ever played, somebody, somewhere can say, 'I was better than him at a certain point in life.'
"In the end, what matters is the dedication and the perseverance because you go through so many highs and lows, especially as a goaltender — and Mike stuck with it. Obviously, people who wanted the Flames to win realized how good he was, but it was really strange, especially for a hometown guy, to see how some people reacted to him."
Vernon had the right personality for a goaltender — able to shrug off the last goal so that he could focus on the next one.
"People took that as being excessively cocky, or that he didn't care," said Patterson. "In fact, that was the perfect attitude for a goalie. If you look at any of the goalies who were successful, they all did that. Even today, you look at Kipper (Miikka Kiprusoff, Calgary's current goalie). He has that same mentality.
"Goalies can't live in the past. They have to be right in the moment."
And Vernon's moment comes on Tuesday night when he will join Lanny McDonald as only the second player in Flames' history to have his sweater retired. Maybe then he'll finally get some of the love from the fans that he missed out on in his playing days.
