The years melted away Tuesday night as five icons of sports broadcasting kept a sold-out audience at rapt attention at the Bayview Place Presentation Centre with stories about athletes ranging from Muhammad Ali to Bobby Orr.
The Legends of Broadcasting Hot Stove was the first event of Scotiabank Hockey Day in Canada, which continues through the week culminating with the Sportsnet national broadcast from Victoria.
The room was festooned with jerseys of Victoria’s hockey past, from Lester Patrick’s 1925 Stanley Cup champion Cougars, Patrick’s WHL minor-pro Cougars of 1949 to 1961, the pro WHL Maple Leafs from 1964 to 1967, the major-junior WHL Cougars from 1971 to 1994, the ECHL pro Salmon Kings from 2004 to 2011 and the major-junior WHL Royals from 2011 to the present.
One fan, Lisa Abram, had a T-shirt that read: “Darryl Sittler Called Me On My Birthday.” That he did, confirmed the UVic communications officer, promising to one day elaborate. Other fans came attired in jerseys, from the Calgary Flames to Team Canada, but with the Vancouver Canucks jerseys of former players being prevalent.
So it was only fitting that Jim Robson, the former longtime play-by-play voice of the Canucks, was among the Hot Stove panelists. He recalled the old California Golden Seals and calling Canucks games in Oakland with 4,500 fans in the cavernous arena.
Hot Stove host Ron MacLean, who needs little introduction from Hockey Night in Canada, knew his B.C. audience and paid a tribute to Robson, comparing Robson’s style with that of former U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt and his fireside chats.
“Jim provoked oratorical brilliance with few words and by keeping it concise with a minimalist style,” said MacLean.
“Like Game 6 of the 1994 Stanley Cup final when Trevor Linden looked to be hurt and Jim said in the dying seconds: ‘You know he’ll play [Game 7] … he’ll play with crutches if he has to.’ ”
Later that year, MacLean co-hosted CBC’s coverage of the 1994 Victoria Commonwealth Games with Brian Williams, which MacLean recalled with tremendous fondness: “I remember broadcasting from atop the Delta Ocean Pointe, with the Inner Harbour as the backdrop, and my two favourite Canadian athletes from the Games being [runner] Angela Chalmers and [swimmer] Marianne Limpert.”
For a hockey Hot Stove, it was remarkable how many times Ali’s name came up in the tales of old. Tim Ryan retired to Victoria after a long and distinguished career covering the NHL, NFL, Olympics, boxing and tennis for U.S. networks CBS, NBC and ESPN, and recalled covering the watershed 1971 Ali-Joe Frazier fight at Madison Square Garden. Legendary B.C. broadcaster Bernie Pascall related a story about hearing how Ali trained by cutting down trees in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. So Pascall and his cameraman drove Ali to North Vancouver to get a shot of Ali chopping down a tree before the fight against George Chuvalo at the Pacific Coliseum: “The tree only came down part way and Ali turned to the camera and said: ‘Man, these Canadians are stubborn. Chuvalo just won’t go down.’ ”
Also on the panel was Jim Laing, a storied voice in Saskatchewan junior hockey, and who was the Boston Bruins play-by-play radio broadcaster for Bobby Orr’s rookie season in 1966-67.
In response to the eternal Canadian sports question, Orr or Gretzky, MacLean said: “I say Orr.” But the Bruins man Laing was more circumspect: “It’s difficult to say. But I don’t know of any player who brought more excitement to a game than Orr.”
Ryan and Laing have retired to Victoria and Pascall to Parksville. Robson, who began his sports broadcasting career in Port Alberni calling the play-by-play for the Athletics basketball dynasty, is retired on the Lower Mainland. MacLean, who lived in Victoria for a year as kid, is based in Toronto and will join the regular Hockey Night in Canada panel on Sportsnet on Saturday from Victoria.
“It seems every 30 years I come back to Victoria — as a four-year-old in 1964, for the Commonwealth Games in 1994 and now Hockey Day in Canada in 2024,” he said.
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: [email protected]
