The fans of the Hershey Bears are known throughout the American Hockey League for their fervent support of the guys wearing the uniform of the Chocolate and White, adopting them as their own while watching them mature as pros on their way to realizing their dream of making it to the National Hockey League.

However, when someone who could be considered one of their own wears a uniform of a different stripe, like that of a referee, Ryan Fraser, now that’s a whole other story.

Fraser, the son of NHL referee, Kerry Fraser, knew from an early age that his calling was to become an official, and his father offered some encouraging words that helped fuel his desire to strive for “stardom in the stripes.”

“I remember attending a camp that my dad used to work at, the Western Hockey League School of Officiating in Calgary.  I must have been 12 or 13 years old and I would go just to learn how to referee.  I remember asking him while we were driving to the airport from that camp, ‘Dad do you think I have a shot of becoming an NHL referee?’  His reply was, ‘Ryan, you have just as good of a shot as anyone else’.”

A few years down the road from the Calgary car ride with his dad, the young Fraser started to carve out a career for himself, starting in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and ironically under the command of Ron Goodman who is the father of current AHL linesman, Bob Goodman, who often takes to the ice at Giant Center under the command of Fraser.

“I seriously started thinking about it as a career around college when I started refereeing to make some extra money, and found out that I had a little bit of a knack for it,” Fraser said.

“I went to York College of Pennsylvania for two years, and I have fond memories of Hershey and the surrounding area.  I worked with Rich Zerbe and some other local talent from the area in men’s leagues, junior hockey, and youth hockey.”

“I worked for Mr. Goodman, who I contacted when I moved out to this area because he was in charge of the assignments.  He actually said to me, ‘No problem, I’ll get you some games, but we are going to start you out with some youths’, and I told him that was no problem.  So, I came out and he had me doing mites games for a couple of weekends.”

“I think one of the coaches called Mr. Goodman and said, ‘This new kid you’ve got—Fraser? What are you doing having him to do mite games?’ and Mr. Goodman said, ‘He’s new to the area and I want to see what he can do’.  Then the guy said to him, ‘You know who he is, don’t you?’, and Goodman said, ‘No’.”

“The other guy said, ‘That’s Kerry Fraser’s son; he has some refereeing experience and we need to move him up.’  Ron still jokes about that now, how he had me doing mites, but it was a great experience doing hockey around here.  Everybody welcomed me with open arms,” said Fraser who was born in Sarnia, Ontario, but moved to Vorhees, New Jersey, as a teenager.

In an effort to put his professional officiating career on a faster track, Fraser left York College after a couple of years and returned to New Jersey under the watchful wing of his dad.

“I wanted to focus more on officiating, so I moved closer to my father and transferred my last two years to Rowan University in New Jersey.  It was about 30 minutes from my dad and I figured that would allow him to see me more and mold me into a better official.”

The NHL lockout season of 2004-05 altered the course for many players and officials in both the minors and in the show, and had many of them scrambling to find new forms of employment to try and not only compensate for the lost season, but to prepare for a future that may not have included hockey.  Fraser was included in that group, and chose to find supplemental employment in a familiar field.

“I’m 32 years old now and I’m also a police officer.  When the NHL locked out, it was a big wake-up call for me.  I was 27 and I knew they weren’t going to take a year off and then come back from probably the year layoff and not let anybody go or not hire anyone,” remembered Fraser.

“I also knew there were no retirements coming up, so realistically I thought I may have had a good five years before I even had a shot and that was at 27 years old.  I didn’t want to be 35 years old and realize I had no opportunity for a career in the NHL, and I wanted to have something to provide me with a pension and a salary.”

“I was working for $22,000 a year from the time I was 21, refereeing the USHL and UHL.  I made the decision to go into law enforcement.  I had a friend who is a linesman in this league, Matt McNulty, who is also a police officer with New Jersey Transit Police Department, which is a state agency in New Jersey.  I went through the police academy in the summer time, which is the off-season for hockey, and I’ve continued to do both since.”

Even with the physical challenges involved in his daytime job wearing the badge, Fraser still continues to maintain a hectic hockey schedule patrolling the ice.

“When I was a full-time ref, I did about 80 to 90 games a year.  Since the police job has started, I’m down to around 40 to 55 games a season, which is a pretty full slate considering the other job four nights a week.”

Many people don’t have a full realization of how tough a job it is to be an on-ice official as opposed to a player in hockey’s minor leagues. Unlike the players who play half of their games at home, the officials never have a home game; by contrast, the players have roommates and bond with each other on the road, but officials don’t always work with the same crew, which can create many lonely miles along the highway in route to the next stop.

“I often travel alone,” said Fraser who just arrived at Giant Center after driving from Albany where he had worked the previous night.  “I get mileage when I drive.  If it’s a significant distance, I’ll fly, and that’s handled through the league.  Hotels are taken care of by the league and they also give us a per diem.  As far as the league taking care of us, we have a lot of travel and it’s a lot of time away, but this league is definitely a class organization.  The league itself really takes good care of the referees.”

A prime example of the league taking good care out it’s own occurred for Fraser a couple of years ago when he went under the knife for off-season surgery which the AHL made sure would be a success.

“I had a double sports hernia two years ago, but I finished the season.  The league’s worker’s comp took care of me.  I went and saw the best doctor for that at Drexel and they took good care of me.  As far as getting hurt, the league takes very good care of their officials.”

Surprisingly, considering how many games he has officiated, compounded by the fact that he is out on the ice for the entirety of any encounter he oversees, Fraser has had what he describes as no “serious injuries”, but there was one “minor mishap” in Binghamton.