How Flames analyst Kevin Sawyer sparked the nastiest night in Saddledome history

CALGARY — The Ugly Duckling.

That’s what the front-page headline screamed under Kevin Sawyer’s mugshot the morning after one of the strangest, nastiest and most memorable nights ever staged inside the Saddledome.

Sawyer was public enemy No. 1 after he and his Anaheim Mighty Ducks had spent the previous evening helping turn an ordinary Calgary Flames loss into an NHL demolition derby still talked about today. 

Twenty-five years later, there’s a delightful twist to the story.

He’s back in town.

Only now he’s wearing a headset.

Sawyer will debut Thursday as Sportsnet’s rink-side colour commentator on Flames broadcasts (9 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. MT), and while plenty of Calgary viewers may be wondering who he is, they’re about to find out he has a rather intimate history with this franchise.

He later came an autograph away from becoming a Flame himself.

But first came that night.

Dec. 8, 2001.

Sawyer 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.

“I was a fourth-line mucker, grinder, fighter,” the 52-year-old native of Christina Lake, B.C., said. “Chip and chase, get on the body, and piss people off.”

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 Hävelid, Sawyer knew he had to respond.

“I’m thinking immediately to myself, ‘OK, I have to do something just as stupid, or I’m going to the minors,” said Sawyer, who racked up an unfathomable 398 penalty minutes in 60 IHL games three years earlier.

Sawyer jumped over the boards and tried to fight Bob Boughner.

Denied.

So Sawyer went back to the bench and told linemates Dan Bylsma and Denny Lambert: “Boys, no matter where you’re at, get the puck on net.”

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.

“I remember thinking to myself, ‘I actually hit the net — that’s a shot on net,’” he laughed.

He kept skating straight at Vernon and bowled the prone netminder over.

“The truth is, I never really hit him that hard,” he insisted. “It was more of a push.”

No matter.

Sawyer immediately spun around with gloves off and fists clenched, ready for an ensuing attack, which came from Robyn Regehr.

Then the gloves started flying everywhere.

Sawyer versus Regehr.

Lambert versus Iginla.

Suddenly the Saddledome had become a boxing gym with hockey boards.

That was only the beginning.

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.

“That was the wildest game I played in the Saddledome, I’ll tell you that,” Berube said from his home in Philadelphia. "And I had a front-row seat to watch it all.”

The numbers remain ridiculous.

A total of 279 penalty minutes were handed out in the final 85 seconds. 

The Flames’ 190 penalty minutes in the third period was an NHL record, since broken by the 2004 Flyers.

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.

Sawyer forfeited $10,954 in salary: "I lost a mid-sized sedan,” he joked.

And somehow, the night got even better.

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.

“I actually got a call from (league disciplinarian) Colin Campbell because they were thinking of suspending me,” said a winking Lowry, now an assistant with the Flames.

“I just said, ‘Hey, listen, I was just trying to turn and get it off the glass and it got caught in my curve.’”

Sawyer remembers watching in the dressing room with more than half his teammates, like they were witnessing the Super Bowl.

“Uh-oh, here we go.”

Berube went after Jeff Friesen, but Friesen wanted absolutely no part of it and promptly turtled.

“Coli called and said he had to suspend me because I kept things going,” chuckled Berube. “I said, ‘Alright, Coli, no problem.’”

Sawyer recalls the post-game euphoria as being the ultimate team-builder, prompting the lads to finish the night at Cowboys nightclub.

However, highlights from the game were being shown in the bar non-stop, as patrons quickly caught on who they were.

“We started getting some looks from some big ol’ cowboys, so I’m like, ‘We better get the hell out of here,’” laughed Sawyer, whose short career included fights with all the heavyweights like Bob Probert, Tie Domi, Stu Grimson and Tony Twist. 

“We left.”

Following mixed reaction to the chaos he helped fuel, Sawyer’s agent, Jeff Solomon, told him it had been “the best thing you could have done for your career.”

He was right, as two summers later Darryl Sutter offered Sawyer a two-year, one-way contract with the Flames.

“I was that close to being a Flame,” said Sawyer, who had to decline, as a concussion suffered in a fight while standing up for Paul Kariya ended his career in 2003.

All told, he had three goals and 403 penalty minutes in 110 NHL games, to go with his whopper of a story.  

He eventually moved into coaching, then broadcasting, spending nine years with TSN in Winnipeg before moving to Calgary this summer.

The irony is almost too perfect.

Sawyer knows that night has become part of his own mythology.

“Clips of that night go around the internet every once in a while and if it wasn’t for that night I don’t think my kids would know that I played in the NHL,” smiled the father of two.

Now they — and a whole new generation of Flames fans — are going to know him for something else.

Starting Thursday, when the Flames host Seattle, The Ugly Duckling will get a chance to make his mark from between the benches — across from the penalty box with which he was so familiar.