For the longest time, Dean Morton considered it an embarrassment. He had worked so hard and done everything they asked of him and all he got in return was one game. One hauntingly short National Hockey League game.
And he had scored a goal, too. Shouldn't that have counted for something?
With the Detroit Red Wings trailing 3-0 against the Calgary Flames, Morton, a rookie defenceman, ripped a shot that sneaked through a crowd of players and found the far corner of the net to the right of goaltender Mike Vernon. Morton's set-up men were Marc Habscheid and captain Steve Yzerman. It was the first game of the 1989-90 season for Calgary and Detroit. It was the final game Morton ever played in the NHL.
"The other day, I watched it on videotape," Morton said from a hotel room in Norfolk, Va. "I hadn't seen it for eight or nine years and I had forgotten how much I'd played. I was on the ice for a lot of key situations. That was nice."
If you scan the Internet and search the record books, you will find Morton's name scribbled in the margins of hockey history. Only three players have scored a goal in their lone NHL appearance. The first was Rolly Huard with the 1930-31 Toronto Maple Leafs, and the most recent was Brad Fast, who scored for Carolina last season. He's now playing for the Florida Everblades of the ECHL and might some day make it back to the NHL.
Morton thought he'd return to the NHL, but as the years passed, the dream faded, until it became a solemn exercise in what ifs? What if he'd thrown another hit, picked up another point or done a better job of taking the man out from in front of the Detroit net? What if the Red Wings hadn't sent him to the American Hockey League to get away from the sourness of a team in transition?
Morton pondered those questions when he retired from the game in 1993. He pondered them while he ran a European-style delicatessen in Oshawa, Ont., and later built car seats for a division of General Motors. Eventually, he gave up the wondering and did something about it. He worked hard. He did everything that was asked of him, and then a wonderfully delightful thing happened: he made it back to the NHL, as a referee, one who worked the occasional Detroit game and got to see his old set-up man, Yzerman, up close again.
"When you leave the game, you wonder: 'How do you manufacture that adrenalin rush? How do you feel the passion again?' " Morton said. "Officiating has helped me find that. At the end of a successful game, there's a small sense of accomplishment."
Even when the NHL isn't shut down because of labour woes, Morton is primarily a minor-league official. He is 37, has worked a total of 31 NHL games and for five seasons has spent much of his time as an AHL referee, travelling from Edmonton to Norfolk.
Handling minor-league games is not a glamorous life. At times, angry fans have followed Morton to his hotel to complain to him. He's been threatened. Sometimes, he's had to call the police for protection. And yet there is little Morton would change about his story.
The NHL career that was both a debut and farewell has slowly turned from embarrassment to pride. Ask him to reflect on that night in Calgary and Morton easily recalls how the game was played in the Saddledome the season after the Flames had won the Stanley Cup, how Sergei Makarov played in his first NHL game for Calgary and how the Red Wings trailed early and battled back, only to lose 10-7.
Morton's parents weren't at the game, but they listened to it on the radio. They'd already made the trek to Detroit to watch their son play in an exhibition game alongside his childhood friend Steve Chiasson.
Morton had been drafted by Detroit with the 148th-pick overall, but knew he was in tough to stay. After scoring his goal, he finished the team's three-game trip by taking pregame skates in Vancouver and Los Angeles, then sitting out. His assignment in Vancouver was to buy hot dogs and pop for the veterans who were also scratched. In L.A., Borje Salming, Joe Murphy, Brent Fedyk and Morton toured Venice Beach and gawked at the scenery.
Days later, the goal-a-game defenceman began his slow descent, all the way to the Brantford Smoke of the Colonial League. It was there that an Ontario Hockey Association official asked Morton whether he'd be interested in putting on a striped jersey, maybe working some Ontario Hockey League games. Morton agreed and was hired by the NHL as a trainee in 1999.
"I have a wife [Sandy]and two girls [Megan and Mikayla]" he said. "My quality of life is very satisfying. When I watched the tape of that game, I looked at it in a new way. . . . I wore No. 5 [before star defenceman Nik Lidstrom] I left a lot of goals in that number, but I do have a better shooting percentage."
For life.