What If?
Published in November 2000 -  Diane Lau

The recent election mayhem put Shinny in a real "welcome to the Twilight Zone" mood. He couldn’t help but ask himself questions like, What if Nader had agreed to throw his votes to Gore? What if those Democrats buying votes from the homeless with cigarettes in Milwaukee County had been caught earlier? What if it had occurred to the confused voters of Palm Beach County to ask for assistance instead of punching out two holes?

 

Then Shinny got sick of thinking about the election, and decided it would be much more fun to ponder some What If scenarios concerning key moments in Hockey History. And of course he wanted to share them with you, our beloved readers...

What If...McSorley’s Stick Hadn’t Been Illegal?

Picture this: In the pivotal game 2 of the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals, the Canadiens are down by a goal to the Kings. Habs captain Guy Carbonneau suspects the Kings’ Marty McSorley has an illegal curve on his stick. If he’s correct, the ensuing power play could save the game for his team, but if he’s wrong, it will be a penalty for Montreal.

Carbo speaks to the ref, the action is stopped to measure the stick. But in this alternate reality, it turns out to be legal!

The Kings score on their power play and hold on to win the game. McSorley is an instant hero for having been clever enough to make his stick curve just barely legal. Amped by this psychological victory, McSorley scores game winners in the next two games and the Kings win the Stanley Cup. For the rest of his career, Marty focuses on scoring, and he
goes down in history as solid scorer and team player. Meanwhile, the winning of the Cup insures that Wayne Gretzky stays in Los Angeles, and his eventual retirement game is even more spectacular and glitzy than the one we saw in New York. Barry Melrose also stays with the Kings long term, and his berth as an ESPN commentator is taken instead by Denis Leary.

As for Guy Carbonneau, he never quite lives down the error that cost his team the Cup. At the end of the following season he is dispatched to the St. Louis Blues in trade for Jim "a journeyman you never heard of" Montgomery. No, wait. That really happened.

What If...It Wasn’t a Goal?

Picture this: In a moment of amazing lucidity, Dominik Hasek actually notices Brett Hull was in the crease when he scored the goal which in our timeline won the 1999 Stanley Cup. Dom frantically waves off the goal as soon as it is scored.

Meanwhile, months earlier the NHL’s planned memo clarifying the in-the-crease rule was
inadvertently left in the copy machine by a league employee distracted by a discussion of
the previous night’s episode of "Ally McBeal." The copies are never made, and the memo is discarded by a Xerox repairman making his monthly maintenance call.

Consequently when the referees see Dom flailing (and flailing more frantically than he typically does), they immediately intervene and go upstairs for a review. There is no time
for any celebration to begin, and players and fans alike wait tensely for the eventual call: No goal.

Three overtimes later, at 3:49 a.m. Eastern Time, Jason Wooley finally shoves a backhand past the exhausted Ed Belfour. Only 582 fans are still in their seats, and 469 of them are sleeping. The remaining 113 leap to their feet, or at least manage to stand, and cheer the Sabres’ victory.

The next day newspapers all over the world have headlines about the marathon game. Meanwhile, the players on both teams sleep non-stop until the following day, when the series continues with Game 7 in Dallas.

The Stars win 3-1.

Jeffrey Spring, who conceived www.nogoal.com in this time line, instead spends the summer campaigning for more comfortable seats in Marine Midland Arena, having developed chronic back spasms from sleeping through the fifth and sixth overtimes in an awkward position. His web site, www.nospasms.com, eventually folds in October.

What If...Al Michaels Didn’t Do the Call?

Picture this: The day of that famous game at Lake Placid in 1980, when the U.S. is about to face the Soviet Union on the ice, Al Michaels develops laryngitis.

Everyone knows this will probably be the end of the road for Herb Brooks’ team, but there’s always a chance this could be a match for the ages. Who will get the call to do play-by-play in Michaels’ stead? The network scrambles to find a replacement, but with the short notice, can they find someone in time? With only minutes to spare, one of the
other Olympics journalists volunteers for the task, a young sports announcer named...

...Gary Thorne!

By golly, it’s Gary who gets the nod, and in this alternate timeline it’s Gary who shouts with near hysteria as Mike Eruzione scores for the U.S. As the final seconds tick off and the U.S. seals their victory, Gary closes the game with what will one day be known as his trademark phrase:

"Mercy!"

Yes, "Mercy!" This shining moment in U.S. hockey history is marked by the unforgettable cry of "Mercy!" Well, that’s great, but we can hardly refer to this game for time immemorial as "The Mercy Game." That sounds like a bad Neil Jordan film. Well, the game is never forgotten anyway, although everyone feels like somehow it could have
ended with more flair.

What If…The NHL Used the Butterfly Ballot?

Picture this: It’s the 1998-99 season, and the league announces the winners of the All Star voting. Much to everyone’s shock and dismay, Wayne Gretzky is inexplicably omitted from the winners’ list. Even more surprising is the fact that appearing for the Eastern Conference will be the Tampa Bay Lightning’s young Czech defenseman, Pavel Kubina.

An investigation uncovers the fact that across the continent, the "butterfly" design of the All Star ballot was confusing to fans. Thousands come forward claiming that they intended to vote for Gretzky, but accidentally punched out the hole for Kubina. Calls to conduct a revote are heard across the league.

But a group of rabid ’Ning fans insist the votes for Kubina were valid. They site the quick rise to popularity achieved by the defenseman and accuse Gretzky fans of trying to "steal the election for the Great One." North America’s Czech population takes to the streets chanting, "Pavel is an All Star!"

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman meets with advisors, trying to determine how to diffuse the situation before it becomes a genuine crisis. As alarmed as he is about Gretzky’s omission in this, probably his last season on the ice, the newly created "North America vs. the World" format is also at stake, since the error gives the latter team a net of two more players than the former. If these problems weren’t enough of a marketing nightmare, there is also the fact that the World will be defensemen-heavy while North America will lack a forward.

Don Cherry, convinced the entire debacle is "a plot by those wussy Europeans," urges rioting in the streets of Canada. Nevertheless he insists "Any team with even one Canadian on it will wup the ass of a team without ’em."

Gretzky supporters urge Wayne to take action to demand a recount, but the Great One keeps his cool. CBC and ESPN show countless replays of Wayne, Janet and the kids happily playing touch football in their yard. "I’m confident in the system," declares No. 99.

Meanwhile Pavel Kubina goes ahead with plans to appear in the All Star Game. "I don’t want to seem presumptuous," he says, "but it’s important for the fans that I am prepared." Kubina gets a haircut and buys plane tickets for numerous relatives to fly over to the U.S. for the game.

All eyes are on Florida as the All Star Game approaches and Tampa prepares to host the 1999 All Star Game. Florida Governor and Lightning fan Jeb Bush declares, "This All Star business is really tearing the state and our country apart. I just can’t imagine a worse result of an election than this one."

What If...Dave Lau Didn’t Take That Job at Reinhart Boerner Law Firm?

What if...wha’? Okay, we’ll explain. If Dave Lau didn’t take that job at Reinhart Boerner law firm, which he hesitated to do because, well, who really wants to work for lawyers?, then he never would have met the Editor. And if he never met the Editor, she wouldn’t have been exposed to those incomprehensible Blackhawk hockey games on the radio;or had that neat lesson in the layout of a hockey rink, complete with diagram on notebook paper, the night she saw her first game on TV at Dave’s parents’ house in Illinois; or gone to see the Hawks play the Oilers in February of 1994, which officially kicked off her hockey obsession.

And of course, without all these occurrences, the World Wide Web would be 200 html pages smaller without the presence of "A Tribute to Guy Carbonneau," and—horror of horrors—you would not be reading Hockey Snacks right now.

Could any alternative time line, short of Paul Henderson failing to score, be worse?