Latest episode<\/a><\/p>\nSawyer was in his first full NHL season after five years in the minors. He was undrafted, 208 pounds, and knew precisely what his job was.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a fourth-line mucker, grinder, fighter,\u201d the 52-year-old native of Christina Lake, B.C., said. \u201cChip and chase, get on the body, and piss people off.\u201d<\/p>\n
So when Flames tough guy Craig Berube ran goalie J.S. Giguere behind the net with just over four minutes left, and then swatted away Niclas H\u00e4velid, Sawyer knew he had to respond.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m thinking immediately to myself, \u2018OK, I have to do something just as stupid, or I\u2019m going to the minors,\u201d said Sawyer, who racked up an unfathomable 398 penalty minutes in 60 IHL games three years earlier.<\/p>\n
Sawyer jumped over the boards and tried to fight Bob Boughner.<\/p>\n
So Sawyer went back to the bench and told linemates Dan Bylsma and Denny Lambert: \u201cBoys, no matter where you\u2019re at, get the puck on net.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two shifts later, Jarome Iginla was hooking him near centre ice when Sawyer lifted the puck toward the Calgary net, where Mike Vernon was tending goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember thinking to myself, \u2018I actually hit the net \u2014 that\u2019s a shot on net,\u2019\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n
He kept skating straight at Vernon and bowled the prone netminder over.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe truth is, I never really hit him that hard,\u201d he insisted. \u201cIt was more of a push.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sawyer immediately spun around with gloves off and fists clenched, ready for an ensuing attack, which came from Robyn Regehr.<\/p>\n
Then the gloves started flying everywhere.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Suddenly the Saddledome had become a boxing gym with hockey boards.<\/p>\n
That was only the beginning.<\/p>\n
Shift after shift, the game descended into line brawls. By the end, Craig Conroy vividly remembers the lone Flames player left on the bench was Jukka Hentunen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the wildest game I played in the Saddledome, I\u2019ll tell you that,\u201d Berube said from his home in Philadelphia. “And I had a front-row seat to watch it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
The numbers remain ridiculous.<\/p>\n
A total of 279 penalty minutes were handed out in the final 85 seconds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Flames\u2019 190 penalty minutes in the third period was an NHL record, since broken by the 2004 Flyers.<\/p>\n
Sawyer was suspended five games. Berube got three. Scott Nichol and Flames coach Greg Gilbert both sat for two, while the Flames were fined $25,000.<\/p>\n
Sawyer forfeited $10,954 in salary: “I lost a mid-sized sedan,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n
And somehow, the night got even better.<\/p>\n
Late in the game, with players disappearing into penalty boxes and dressing rooms at a feverish pace, Dave Lowry realized that if he got a stoppage in play in the final 14 seconds he could spring Berube from the box for one last fight. So, with no one around him he turned at centre ice and blatantly flipped the puck into the upper deck. The crowd went wild as Berube lined up against Jeff Friesen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually got a call from (league disciplinarian) Colin Campbell because they were thinking of suspending me,\u201d said a winking Lowry, now an assistant with the Flames.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just said, \u2018Hey, listen, I was just trying to turn and get it off the glass and it got caught in my curve.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Sawyer remembers watching in the dressing room with more than half his teammates, like they were witnessing the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
Berube went after Jeff Friesen, but Friesen wanted absolutely no part of it and promptly turtled.<\/p>\n
\u201cColi called and said he had to suspend me because I kept things going,\u201d chuckled Berube. \u201cI said, \u2018Alright, Coli, no problem.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Sawyer recalls the post-game euphoria as being the ultimate team-builder, prompting the lads to finish the night at Cowboys nightclub.<\/p>\n
However, highlights from the game were being shown in the bar non-stop, as patrons quickly caught on who they were.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started getting some looks from some big ol\u2019 cowboys, so I\u2019m like, \u2018We better get the hell out of here,\u2019\u201d laughed Sawyer, whose short career included fights with all the heavyweights like Bob Probert, Tie Domi, Stu Grimson and Tony Twist.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Following mixed reaction to the chaos he helped fuel, Sawyer\u2019s agent, Jeff Solomon, told him it had been \u201cthe best thing you could have done for your career.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was right, as two summers later Darryl Sutter offered Sawyer a two-year, one-way contract with the Flames.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was that close to being a Flame,\u201d said Sawyer, who had to decline, as a concussion suffered in a fight while standing up for Paul Kariya ended his career in 2003.<\/p>\n
All told, he had three goals and 403 penalty minutes in 110 NHL games, to go with his whopper of a story.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
He eventually moved into coaching, then broadcasting, spending nine years with TSN in Winnipeg before moving to Calgary this summer.<\/p>\n
The irony is almost too perfect.<\/p>\n
Sawyer knows that night has become part of his own mythology.<\/p>\n
\u201cClips of that night go around the internet every once in a while and if it wasn\u2019t for that night I don\u2019t think my kids would know that I played in the NHL,\u201d smiled the father of two.<\/p>\n
Now they \u2014 and a whole new generation of Flames fans \u2014 are going to know him for something else.<\/p>\n
Starting Thursday, when the Flames host Seattle, The Ugly Duckling will get a chance to make his mark from between the benches \u2014 across from the penalty box with which he was so familiar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CALGARY \u2014\u00a0The Ugly Duckling. That\u2019s what the front-page headline screamed under Kevin Sawyer\u2019s mugshot the morning after one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":915567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-915566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/915567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"32](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790789051_111_32-Thoughts-podcast-Elliotte-Friedman-Kyle-Bukauskas-640x360.jpg\")
32 Thoughts: The Podcast<\/p>\n