Boyer recalls THE GOAL!

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
Yes, Zac Boyer scored the goal that won the 1992 Memorial Cup for the Kamloops Blazers.
And that goal, along with assorted other on-ice contributions by Boyer during a four-season WHL career here, will be saluted tonight at Interior Savings Centre.
Boyer, long-time Blazers board member Andy Clovechok and Stu MacGregor, who rose from part-time scout to general manager, will be honoured as Blazer Legends prior to tonight’s game with the Portland Winter Hawks.
They were introduced to the media Thursday afternoon in the Blazers’ boardroom by general manager Craig Bonner and, yes, stories were told. And, yes, THE GOAL is remembered.
“Scoring that goal changed the Blazers franchise forever,” said Bonner, who was Boyer’s roommate. “It was something the team had never done, in winning the Memorial Cup. It was an incredible moment, an incredible goal that a lot of people in Kamloops will never forget.”
But it turns out some of the credit should go to Phil Huber, who didn’t even earn an assist on the game-winning goal.
It was May 17, 1992, and the Blazers were playing the OHL’s Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds in the Memorial Cup final in Seattle.
The teams were 4-4 late in the third period when Kamloops defenceman Scott Niedermayer fell — or was tripped — near the centre-ice red line, allowing the Greyhounds to head up ice on a 3-on-1 break with only Darryl Sydor back.
Niedermayer recovered and ended up with the puck at the Kamloops line, from where his pass sent Boyer in on Soo goaltender Kevin Hodson.
Boyer had scored 40 goals in a regular season in which he had led the Blazers with 69 assists and 109 points. He considered himself to be a shooter — shoot first and ask questions later.
“I was going to go high glove all the way,” he said. “I was never a deking kind of guy; I always though shot was the best option.
“I thought the shot was the best option all the time on a breakaway.”
But then, in that split second, he remembered a conversation he and Huber had on one of those bus trips that are such a part of life in the WHL.
“I actually remembered all of that in a fraction of a second,” Boyer said. “I still can remember to this day . . . him telling me on a bus one day, ‘If a goalie is flatfooted, go around him.’ ”
So there was Boyer — in Seattle, time winding down in the third period, a tie game, the Memorial Cup on the line . . .
And, sure enough, he looked up and there was Hodson flatfooted and well out in front of his net.
“I realized there was no room and the goalie was actually flatfooted. He was way out and I didn’t have a lot of angle,” Boyer recalled. “I saw it and, I swear to God, I remember Phil Huber telling me that in that split second, and I went around (Hodson).
“So you should probably thank Huber the most.”
While that may be the case, it was Boyer who scored and who frequently gets asked about the goal.
“Absolutely,” he said, when asked if he hears about it on a regular basis.
Then he laughed and added: “It definitely has brought me some fame.”
MacGregor remembered another important goal Boyer scored that season.
“We were in Prince Albert,” MacGregor said, “and we were down 2-1 after the second period. We came back and won the game, 6-5.”
It was Boyer’s goal with the Blazers two men short that broke a 5-5 tie.
“That turned our whole season,” MacGregor said. “We got (Darryl Sydor) back from the NHL and we got Niedermayer back after that . . . but that was a big-time goal.”
So . . . does Boyer remember that goal?
“I remember the game,” he said. “I don’t remember the goal.”
But he will long remember tonight.
“I’m excited . . . honoured,” said Boyer, who now lives in North Carolina and has his wife, Cindy, here with him.
MacGregor, now the head scout for the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers, also feels honoured.
“It means that the organization I was involved with reached a level of excellence and at that high level we were able to achieve a lot of good results,” he said, “and I just happened to be a piece of that puzzle and helped out in that regard.”
MacGregor, who lives in Kamloops, started with the Junior Oilers as an Edmonton-based part-time scout while he operated a Tire Town Auto Service outlet. He later moved to Calgary, where he continued with Tire Town, before eventually being hired by then-general manager Bob Brown as assistant GM/director of player personnel. MacGregor remembers starting work in that position on March 1, 1991.
“Our duties were scouting . . . I think I was the liaison to the booster club and we all sold advertising,” MacGregor said. “We all did. Everybody did everything. You did what you had to do. It was good. It was fun.
“It was a good learning experience because you got a real grounding of what it takes to build an organization and what it takes to work extremely hard and the success . . . you just had such satisfaction because the hard work turned into such success.”
MacGregor, it turns out, had driven a Blazers’ car to Seattle for the 1992 Memorial Cup. He was seated with Brown when Boyer scored the winning goal.
“Zac scored the goal and Bob and I hugged each other and said, ‘Is this it? Are we finally going to get this done?’ ” said MacGregor, referencing the fact that Kamloops had appeared in the 1984, ’86 and ’90 Memorial Cups but had come home empty each time. That 1992 title started a run of three championships in four seasons.
“The team went (home) on the bus and I was driving back. When we crossed the border, they were just waving us through. The border guards I think had been following the whole process and when we won . . . and the flow of people going across that border at Sumas . . . they just rolled us through. We didn’t show ID. They just zipped us through. It was pretty cool. It was just really, reallky exciting.”
Clovechok, who was a member of the 1948 Allan Cup-champion Edmonton Flyers, spent by his calculation 23½ years as a member of the Junior Oilers/Blazers board of directors, a run that ended with a wholesale changing of the guard. Or as Clovechok, 85, put it: “I was voted off the island.”
Clovechok, Mr. Hockey in these parts, has been involved in hockey at one level or another in Kamloops since 1951.
The first 2,500 fans at tonight’s game will get an 8x10 copy of a Blazer Legends commemorative poster.
And if you plan on attending, you may even get to see Boyer in a Blazers uniform again. Just don’t expect to see him score the winner with time winding down in the third period.
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
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