Last of the old-school zebra stripes

Stories from Ice Level: A Great NHL Referee Tells All
by Rob Simpson with Bill McCreary

Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2026
$24.95 / 9781771624824

Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop

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Early in Rob Simpson’s affectionate tribute to his co-author/subject, we learn that Bill McCreary (2014) is one of only two NHL on-ice officials inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame this century, the other being linesman Ray Scapinello (2008). Is this an indication of both men’s exceptional contributions to the sport, or more a reflection of the sorry state of on-ice officiating since 1999? Or both? Whatever the case, it is fair to say that the gravitas referees once enjoyed in the world’s premier hockey league has diminished since McCreary first put on the NHL zebra stripes in 1984.

As Simpson’s account reminds us, this is mostly due to changes under Gary Bettman’s watch as league commissioner since 1993. After two years at the helm of the NHL, Bettman removed name plates from the back of on-ice officials’ uniforms. This decision—apparently aimed at protecting referees from aggrieved fans, as if those fans couldn’t otherwise identify them—only served to depersonalize referees, removing a degree of intrigue from the sport. As Stories From Ice Level reveals, this was but the first of many measures that have chipped away at the power of referees.

In 1998, the NHL introduced the two-referee system, a change intended to prevent missed calls but which only added new problems of a crowded playing surface and referee disagreement. Meanwhile, the increasing sophistication of video replays and the advent of the coach’s challenge have served to further undermine the traditional authority referees once enjoyed. All this as they continue to suffer fan and coach abuse while risking injury from on-ice collisions, flying pucks, and even stray punches while breaking up fights.

Simpson, a Vancouver-based sportswriter and broadcaster who first covered hockey as a teenager in 1991, went on to host national NHL radio and TV programs as well as producing and hosting hockey documentaries. This is his fourth hockey book, a run that began with Between the Lines, a biography of Scapinello. In Stories from Ice Level, he looks at McCreary’s colourful career in the context of all these changes taking place around him.

Just on numbers alone, McCreary is a worthy subject. His twenty-seven years as an NHL referee included 1,737 regular season games, 297 playoff games (including fifteen Stanley Cup Finals), the 1991 Canada Cup, the 1996 World Cup of Hockey, and the 1998, 2002, and 2010 Winter Olympics—including every gold medal game. Then there’s the personality. McCreary, an old-school ref admired by players and coaches alike for his direct, no-nonsense style and sense of fairness, was instantly recognizable for his giant moustache: if the Village People had included the hockey ref in their lineup of macho men tropes, McCreary would have been the model clone.

For all the excitement and glamour he would enjoy as part of hockey’s elite, McCreary took none of it for granted. At age five he survived a bout of meningitis, an affliction that had killed an older sister before he was born. His father died when he was eleven, which is why he spent so much time in adolescence with his uncle and cousins.

Across generations of his extended family, Simpson reveals so many other Bill McCrearys or hockey-playing relatives that it’s hard to keep track of them all. Then there are the coincidental relationships: George McPhee, a tier two teammate of McCreary’s when they both played Junior B in Guelph, Ontario, later becomes family because McCreary’s wife Marianne is McPhee’s cousin.

But the hockey stories are what count here, and there’s no doubt that McCreary has seen it all. From Eric Lindros’s first game at the Quebec Colisée as a Philadelphia Flyer (following the first Nordiques goal, McCreary had to pick up at least nine baby pacifiers off the ice, a response to Lindros’s refusal to play for the team that drafted him), to the time he threw his whistle at legendary coach Scotty Bowman (before realizing he would need to get it back), all the great stories are here.

McCreary took no B.S. from anyone—players, coaches, or fans—and his story reminds us that referees, being human, are worthy of respect. McCreary himself earned much of it as a good communicator who put out fires before they started, warning players and coaches to stop bad behaviour or face penalties.

He praises coaches like Colorado’s Bob Hartley, who despite losing a bitterly fought Game 7 against Dallas in 1999, visited the officials’ room after the game to shake hands and thank them for their work—a much appreciated gesture, given that the league had to put the brakes on angry coaches and managers visiting on-ice officials to confront and berate them. (The “No admittance” signs bear Bettman’s signature.)

There are more than a few surprises here. Ron Francis, the league’s all-time fifth leading scorer and one of its classiest players as a three-time winner of the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy for sportsmanlike play, is revealed to have had sixteen fights during his NHL career. Elsewhere, McCreary debunks the “even it up” myth—the assumption that refs keep track of how many penalties are given to both teams and hand out an equal amount to be fair—and says he never did it. He also laments the fate of a good referee, Tim Peel, who was fired after being caught on a hot mic saying he wanted to penalize Nashville.)

Simpson’s account of Sidney Crosby’s “golden goal” at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver raises the possibility that McCreary, the presiding ref, may have caused it by being in the way along the boards and corralling the puck in his skate. This had me scurrying to YouTube to review a goal I’d seen dozens of times. Sure enough, there it is: if you’re a conspiracy theorist, you might think the Canadian McCreary was kick-passing the puck to Sid the Kid—a referee’s assist!—but even USA GM Brian Burke, calling it “a shitty way for that hockey game to end,” said it was an accident.

The authors’ accounts of injury-related trauma in the game are chilling, particularly accounts of Richard Zednik’s throat-slicing incident and Trent McCleary blocking a shot with his throat. The frequent proximity of near-death experience is something few hockey fans consider when chanting “Ref, you suck!”

But this great referee does not always “tell all.” At one point, reading McCreary’s account of Andy Van Hellemond’s sudden exit from his office as director of officiating, we are left none the wiser as to why the Hall of Fame ref had to go. I suspect this was out of a dignified, collegial respect for one of McCreary’s own: as news reports revealed at the time, van Hellemond had gambling debts, was borrowing money from refs under his supervision, and was said to have handed out plum assignments to those who shelled out.

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Steeped in bro culture sensibility, Stories from Ice Level is in some parts like a deep dive into the manosphere. The chummy bonhomie, the familiarity of hetero-masculine hockey culture, comes through with the nicknames (“Scampy” for Scapinello, “Burkie” for Brian Burke) and testimonials such as former linesman Scott Driscoll’s recollection: “Billy always looked after us and he had balls of steel.” We’re told that “only men could play” a series like the 1994 semi-final match between the New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils. And a mid-Nineties encounter with Donald Trump and his then-wife, Marla Maples, has McCreary enthusing to Simpson: “Marla was just a knock-out, right?”

McCreary says he’s proud to have been inducted into the Hall of Fame beside late coach Pat Burns, who he includes near the end of the book among a dozen “Beauties,” his favourite people in the game. (I am less enamoured of Burns who, apart the Sutter brothers, is the only non-referee/linesman listed. Though widely regarded in his day as the dean of NHL coaches, Burns was also an unapologetic homophobe who once said that gay players would never be accepted in the league.)

But as with McCreary’s star-struck encounters with U.S. presidents Reagan and Clinton, and Canadian prime minister Harper, “all politics aside” should go without saying. Stories from Ice Level is an entertaining look at one of the last of a dying breed in NHL officialdom. Whether you’re a stats-mad hockey nerd or an old-time fan who just loves collecting anecdotes from the game’s glory days, there’s plenty on offer in McCreary’s one-of-a-kind story.

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Daniel Gawthrop is the author of Cutting Edge: Hockey as Queer Culture, which will be published by Arsenal Pulp Press in the Fall, and six other books. Visit his Substack here and website here. [Editor’s note: Daniel has previously reviewed hockey books by Patrick Johnston and Peter Leech,  Mike Keenan and Ed Willes, to name a few, and has also reviewed the work of Ziyad Saadi, Eddy Boudel Tan, and Ervin Malakaj for The British Columbia Review. He is a co-founder of the Cutting Edges, Vancouver’s LGBTQ+ hockey association, where he still plays left-wing.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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