You tell a terrible story younglin!
It's the 75th Anniversary of the NHL, Montreal is already secured a place in the finals. The entire hockey world is on pins and needles over a potential Montreal vs Toronto Stanley Cup, not seen since the expansion era. A young commissioner has a different view though. Los Angeles has the greatest most marketable player in hockey, who better to promote hockey to the American TV base than Wayne Gretzky in the Cup final!
Game 1 is handily won by the Leafs, and marked by a blatant attempt to injure Toronto's best player.
Game 6 looms, overtime, the Leafs are just about to kill off a penalty when Gretzky high sticks Gilmour. Now back then, a high stick that drew blood was a 5 min major penalty and a game misconduct followed by possible suspension. But even though Dougie is spilling blood all over the rink, "nobody saw how it happened", Kerry Fraser the referee is faced with a hard decision, does he eject the best player in the world and almost guarantee a Leafs victory? So he determines that Gilmour was struck by the puck, and play continues. Seconds later Gretzky scores to force game 7.