Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Paul Romanuk: Toronto Mike'd #281

Episode Date: November 15, 2017

Mike chats with Hockey Night in Canada's Paul Romanuk about his years at TSN, his move to The Team 1050, living in England and his triumphant return to Canada calling games on Hockey Night in Canada for Sportsnet.

Welcome to episode 281 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent brewery celebrating 30 years in the craft beer business. Visit GLB at 30 Queen Elizabeth Boulevard for $5 patio beers. And propertyinthesix.com, Toronto real estate done right. And our newest sponsor, PayTM, an app designed to manage all of your bills in one spot. Download the app today from paytm.ca. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week, a man who needs no introduction, Paul Romanuk. Nice to finally meet you, Paul. Very nice to meet you, Mike. I feel like I

know you because I have corresponded with you. I think back when you were more prolific with blogs, I used to occasionally show up on your comment board and followed you on Twitter. So yeah, nice to finally put a face and voice to the person. And I had the same thought. Like when I met you at the door, I realized I'm now meeting this man for the first time. But I felt like over the years,

we're going back like 10 years now, I'd say, but there was digital correspondence, and I felt like you were a buddy, if you will, and then I'm like, am I meeting this guy for the first time? Yes, indeed. I have never met you before, but I can never say that again. Indeed not. There's no argument there.

Even though I might try to say that. It would be a lie. I've now met Paul Romanuk. Right off the top, real quick, I want to thank the people at Oshawa's The Rock. Do you ever listen to any radio anymore, any music radio? Occasionally, yes, although I must say,

even though it's my hometown, I haven't listened to a lot of The Rock lately. Is it too much rock? Too heavy? No, no, not at all. I just haven't ventured down. I think The Rock probably back in my days in that neck of the woods,

The Rock was an extremely easy listening station which went by the call letter CKQT, which would have been light classical and other stuff. So yeah, that's a long way back. We're going back to the early 80s. But I did not know that The Rock had such a syrupy past. I had no idea. Now it's Metallica, and then maybe you get some Headstones.

They also play Rusty. So I want to thank The Rock for hooking me up with Rusty tickets because last Friday was very late. I got these tickets and I biked down to the Mod Club and it was like I went into a time machine. It was like 1995 all over again when I was in the Mod Club watching Rusty.

So thank you to The Rock and I'll just point out that Dearly Beloved, I watched them before Rusty and they were fantastic as well. Dearly Beloved, a newer band than Rusty, and they were fantastic as well. Dearly Beloved, a newer band than Rusty, but so thank you to The Rock. Paul, we're going to do our deep dive after the sponsor mentions, but Mike Cohen on Twitter says, Mike, when you get Paul Romanuk on, ask him about the St. Lawrence Market. I see him there every Saturday at La Boucherie. La Boucherie, yeah, yeah, the butcher.

The butcher. In French, yeah. There you go. So he wants me to say hi to you because he sees you there all the time. Well, a big hi back. I do, I love to cook and so I go to, when I'm not in the hockey season, I go down to the market, Farmer's Market and the St. Lawrence Market, every Saturday morning early, and that's one of my stops. And that's very European of you. That's what they do in Europe, right? That's the Saturday morning custom. Saturday market day, yep, absolutely. It's a great tradition from Europe.

And later in this program, we'll learn that you know a little bit about living in Europe. We'll get to that. But Tom Beshoff also wants me to ask you about your favorite all-time bars in the beach. And then I won't even read this next part until you tell me, because then he's got to guess at what you're going to say. And if you don't say this, he owes me a beer. Well, there's only one answer to that. As any beacher from my era would know, it was a place which is sadly no longer there that was called Stoney's. And it was the great neighborhood bar. The bar was great. The guy who ran it was a guy, well, is a guy named

Glenn Lexovsky. It's not a bar anymore. It's sadly a chicken stand. But Glenn was the barkeep. It was his place. And as is always the case, it was about the regulars in the bar as much as the bar. And it was a fantastic place back in the, I guess, back in the late 90s, early 2000s. I used to hang out there all the time. And I would not be surprised at all if Tom was one of the regulars. I think he was the Cliff Clavin of Stoney's. He might have been. the Cliff Clavin of Stoney's. He might have been. Yeah, so he finishes his tweet by saying, if he doesn't mention Stoney's, I owe you a beer. Tom, the good news is

you don't owe me a beer. There was no chance that I would answer that question without mentioning Stoney's. So were you always, when it comes to Toronto, were you always an East Ender? You always lived in the East of Yonge? Yes, well, I'll tell you a story. It's a little embarrassing.

I was having breakfast with a buddy this morning in the East End, and I was keeping an eye on time. I said, I'm going to do this podcast with Toronto Mike. And he says, oh, I know Toronto Mike. He's quite prolific, and I follow him and so on. So you have a follower. Thank you. And he said, well, where is it that you have to go? I said, ah, it's out at like Lakeshore and Islington.

And then he laughed. He said, well, that'll take you 20 minutes. And I was thinking, man, like 45 minutes an hour, easy. Because I generally, my world doesn't go much past Yonge Street. Except when I have to go to the airport. So I'm definitely an East End guy, yes. I'm the exact opposite. So I'm the mirror of you.

I'm also like you, I'm in the south end of the city, but my world rarely goes east of Yonge. And I think that is the, I also found when I lived overseas, when I lived in London, it's a universal thing. In London, there was north of the river, there was south of the river. There was west end, there was east end. And you stayed in your area.

I rarely ventured to east London. I was a west London guy. But that means, I mean, of course, you're at the Air Canada Centre quite a bit. But I guess other than that, you don't have much need. All the sporting venues are west of Yonge. Like, I don't think there's a single sports venue east of Yonge. I just had this. I have a buddy.

Speaking of The Rock, my buddy there, Bingo Bob, Bob Ouellette, he's an East Ender. And we have this argument all the time, like, what's better, east of Yonge or west of Yonge? And I argue for west. He argues for east. And, you know, we talk about most of the big concert venues are west of Yonge. You've got, like, the Danforth Music Hall and some smaller ones East of Young. All the

like all your sports teams are playing West of Young. Well, if we're talking Toronto, other than the big thing the West End has by they beat the East End a million to one every time is restaurants and cool bars, cool bars and restaurants. Down where I live, the area where I live, the beach is a disgrace. Like it is an absolute pit. There might be one or two good places down there. Now, there are a couple that have recently opened up that are east of the Don River. But by far, if you want to go out for a bite to eat to sort of a cool place or a bar to have a drink and something better than the half a pound of wings for six bucks or the Jimmy's burger or whatever it is, then you have to go to the West End. So I give the West End that.

We got that one. And also sports. You're right. Sports venues and most concert venues. But still, bizarrely, I'm an East End guy. Cool. Very cool. I love that the city is small, but it's big at the same time.

You're right. There's the East of Yonge, the West of Yonge. You've got the South crowd, the North crowd. The megacity is so vast and diverse and interesting. We're glad you're back. But more on that in a minute. Since we're talking real estate and in Toronto, this is a great segue. See, I'm learning about segues. I'm practically a pro now, Paul. I'm getting there.

Let's play a clip from one of your biggest fans, I should point out. So Brian Gerstein is a sales representative with PSR Brokerage. He sponsors this program and he wanted me to tell you he's been a fan of yours forever and he loves your work. He's the guy. Oh, there's two. I gotta say, because my very good friend Elvis, who sometimes records with me, Elvis heard you're coming on. He never listens to any of my show. Like what a wonderful podcast he's missing out on, right? Come on. He doesn't listen to any episodes, but he heard you're coming on and he made a point of telling me he's a big Paul fan. He's a big fan of your work.

Well, thank you, Elvis. And thank you, sorry, what was it? Brian. And thank you, Brian. Much appreciated. Let's hear from Brian. Propertyinthe6.com Brian Gerstein here, sales representative

with PSR Brokerage. With the country's bank regulator tightening the mortgage rules effective January 1st for all lenders, this will have a huge impact as it will affect those buyers with a down payment of 20% or more who were previously exempt. In January,

expect your affordability to also drop by 20%. You can call me at 416-873-0292 for more information on the changes, as I fully expect a rush of buyers to purchase before you're in. I can also refer you to our in-house mortgage broker team, who can qualify you so you know how much purchasing power you have now and what the number will be in 2018. And there's more, Paul. You'll see there's a pint glass right there. I do see that with the sixth on the pint glass. Property in the sixth is on the pint glass and people should go to propertyinthesix.com to contact Brian. But

Brian wants you to have that pint glass. It's all yours. Brian, thank you very much. It's very kind of you. Lovely pint glass, and I will honor it with something from Great Lakes Brewery. That's a good idea, Paul. You're a professional as well.

Great Lakes Brewery. That's a good idea, Paul. You're a professional as well. Great Lakes Brewery wants you to have something cold and wet to pour into that pint glass. So that six-pack is going home with you as well. What do you got there? That looks, I have some Canuck Pale Ale, which, you know what, I'll probably shotgun a couple of cans before I drive home. That's how much I'll enjoy it. And there's a, the bottle there is, that is a pumpkin ale, I believe. Tis the season, so they do that every year in October and November. Very nice.

Apparently, it's the best pumpkin ale in the city. Very nice. And you know what? I have listened to your podcast, and I completely agree with some sentiments that I've heard. I love the local beer. You can go and I think almost drive by this place coming here. You are right. Because if you're on the Gardner, you can see it.

It's like just a little bit west of Royal York before you get to Islington. So that's going to be fresh beer. Do you want to pop one out randomly and just read? I think in the bottom, I don't know if you can see that, but there should be a date of canned date around it. I cannot see it. I'm in the same boat. I can't see anything that close, but let me take one here. There you go.

Take a look. All right. So, Karma Citra. Hold on here. Okay. November 8th, 2017. So, this was canned November 8th. Wow.

So, less than eight days ago as we sit here. That's fresh. Yeah. That's like that pint of Guinness you get at the top of the Guinness storehouse when you're in Dublin. Have you ever done that to it? I have indeed, yes. Yeah. The freshest beer you're going to have.

So yes, enjoy that from Great Lakes Brewery. Well, thank you. And one more. I want to talk about Paytm, but first a little Pink Floyd to get me warmed up here. Paytm. It's an app designed to manage all of your bills in one spot. You don't have to visit each separate website to make a payment. You can pay all your bills on the Paytm app.

I eat my own dog food here. I've done this. When you make a transaction, for anything other than a credit card, I think there's a law that says you can't apply a promo code when you're paying off a credit card. But if you're paying off anything else, hydro or your cable bill or whatever,

use the promo code Toronto Mike and you get $10 off. So it's free money. Go to paytm.ca, download the app and use the promo code Toronto Mike and $10 is all yours. And you know what? That is fantastic that they were

able to do a deal with Pink Floyd to You're not going to tell Pink Floyd about this, are you Paul? I trust you. I won't be talking to Dave Gilmore anytime soon. I rely on flying below the radar. That's my secret. Somebody, who is it? Mad Dog. You know Mad Dog? He's a

radio personality. Mad Dog and Billy, I think. Right. That was the team back in the day. Now he's going by the name J. Michaels. So he put a fake name on a fake name, just to mess with you. But J. Michaels, he's on afternoons at 1010 is where he is today. And he was asking me, I met him at Great Lakes Brewery of all places. He's like,

I love the Kick Out the Jams episodes. He says, because on Kick Out the Jam episodes, people come back and we play their 10 favorite songs and they talk about why they love the song. And I love these episodes so much. I'm doing one tonight with Stephen Stanley, who's the original guitarist for Lowest of the Low. That's happening tonight. Anyways, Jay's asking me, Mike, how do you get away with playing these songs? And I told him my secret,

which is I cross my fingers and hope I'm flying way below any of these radars. So that's my secret, Paul. That's a great show, though. I'll come back and do one of those someday. I was going to ask you at the end because I have a tune I'm going to play as we talk about a certain band. And I was going to ask you if you'd be willing to come back and do one of those someday. I was going to ask you at the end, because I have a tune I'm going to play as we talk about a certain band, and I was going to ask you if you'd be willing to come back.

But thank you. That would be fantastic. You came up recently on this program because I was recording with DJ Ron Nelson. Oh, yeah. I remember Ron from Campus Radio Day, CKLN at Ryerson, which is, I mean, many years ago. But yeah, Ron was a real, even back then, I haven't seen him probably since then. Might have crossed paths with him, but it doesn't jump out. But really cool guy.

Even back, we're talking early 80s, cool guy plugged into this sort of street music scene, if you will. And that was, man, that would have been way ahead of the curve on, I mean, I guess what's now called urban music, rap, whatever. But, I mean, if you go back to that time, that was the very early days. The first real rap record, as you probably know, was, what was it called? Sugar Hill Gang? No, The Jungle. It's a jungle at times. It's like Jungle's a man, makes you wonder how to keep him going.

Yeah, exactly. That was really the first, generally acknowledged as the first real rap record. And so that was right around that time, and he was plugged right into that scene. He was a pretty cool guy. Yeah, we call him the godfather of hip-hop in Toronto because he's the first guy who played it on the radio at CKLN, and he was the first guy to bring hip-hop acts to Toronto at the Masonic Temple.

Ah, so my memory is accurate. He was one of those guys, and I played totally different. I was into, and still am, a lot of the British, it became Britpop, but at the time it was the Jam, the Clash, the Smiths, it became Brit pop. And at the time it was, uh, the jam, the clash, uh, the Smiths bands like that. Uh, so completely different orbits in terms of our music interest. But I remember talking to the guy and he was always, you check this out. And I played that.

And I was like, man, like this guy really knows his stuff. And I don't hear anybody else on radio in Toronto talking about this stuff. No, no, no. Uh, and when he was on this program, uh, he just said to me, Hey, do you know, he just randomly said, Hey, do you know Paul Romanuk? And I'm like, yes, I know Paul Romanuk. And he's like, yeah, I went to school with him. So he remembers you from CKLN. Is that where your, like, I know you worked with Michael Landsberg there, but can you tell me about how it all begins for you at CKLN in terms of being on the air, doing Marley's play-by-play or whatnot?

Well, what it started when I went to Ryerson, I actually had more aspirations of being a music guy. I'm very passionate about music, as are tens of millions, hundreds of millions, so nothing unique there. But one of the first things I did was I went to the campus radio station, CKLN at the time, and said, like, I want to do a show. And there weren't that many shows. Look, we have one on Friday nights from 9 o'clock until midnight or 9 o'clock till 1 in the morning. So, like, shit shift, right? You're at university Friday night, primo night for going out, and you're going to be in there from 9 to one. Of course it was a shift available, but I said, yeah, yeah, let's take it. And it was called

the Friday night party with Paul Romanek. And I went on and I played the kind of music I was just talking about and absolutely loved it. So that was, uh, that was why I started working at CKLN. Now, uh, they also had a sports department and they needed some volunteers to work on Toronto Marley games. And it wasn't to do play-by-play. It was to be actually the sort of tech guy. So run a board and watch the levels. And Michael Landsberg was the play-by-play guy. There was another guy named Bruce Vance, who was the color guy, I think. And so my job was essentially to, we would do some Toronto Marley home games, was to drag the board, which, I mean, now you could put it in your pocket at that time. Was it like this guy I'm pointing to? It was probably three times as big as that

and three times as heavy. And there was no elevators at Maple Leaf Gardens. So I would lug it up to the booth, plug it all in. We had a line going down to CKLN. Ryerson was a few blocks south. And I would do the levels. So long story short, did this for a month or I can't remember how long. Michael Landsberg, who had a lot of other things on the go, very talented guy. And basically, we would do the games on Sunday afternoons or Saturday afternoons. And I'm sure Michael went, well, why am I doing this? I'm ruining my weekend.

And he said, ah, I don't want to do the play-by-play anymore. And so they were down to play-by-play guy on short notice. And I thought, well, uh, I've done play-by-play if you count turning the TV down, which we've all done as a kid and, uh, and calling, playing goal and calling play by play during road hockey games or being like that little kid in the, in the ad a while back, that was me sometimes sitting there doing the play by play. So I thought, yeah, I'll give it a go. So yeah, I've done play by play. I can do it. And that was that. It's funny how opportunity knocks. A lot of it is just timing. It's just being in the right place. Completely. It so is. I mean, there's an old

saying, which I've used on sportscasts before, but luck is preparation meeting skill. So there's a bit of everything that kind of has to coalesce. But yeah, that was a tremendous stroke of luck. And were you good from the beginning, or were you awful at first? How were those early Marley's games that you were calling? Well, I don't know. It's a long time ago, I'm sure. I hunted for some audio, but I couldn't find any. I've probably got a couple reel-to-reels at home in a box.

Bring it back for your kick out the jams. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure I probably wasn't very good, and I kept doing the games and I guess had an affinity for it. I know I enjoyed it a lot, and then that sort of segued into some real play-by-play with the Oshawa Generals. I've got to pause you for one second,

because Magoo, that's a great handle. On Twitter, Magoo says, ask him about his early days doing Oshawaawa generals games on the radio as a kid i can remember listening to him he was the best so now there are three i'm counting it that's three big fans uh well it was uh again it was all just i was doing the games for the marlies and then we would do some games from oshawa, and I got to talking to the guy who at that time was the voice of the Oshawa generals on CKAR. Get it? C-car.

In Oshawa. Yes, because they make GM cars there. Yeah, 1350 AM. And the guy's name was Mike Inglis, who I think is now the radio voice of the Miami Heat. And so I would come back and do color. Sunday was Oshawa's home night. So I would come in from Toronto or I'd be home for the weekend and I would do color with Mike. And then Mike was a busy guy and he had some freelance gigs that that I guess were conflicting with his general. So it was, hey, you know, the kid does the Marley games. Uh, I want to go,

let him, let him fill in for me. So I started to fill in the occasional Sunday for him. And then Mike left to go on to bigger and better things. And I sort of inherited the general's radio job around 1984, I want to say. And I did that until 19, among other things till 1987, and then moved out West and came back and so on. But yeah, those were great times. It was myself. There was another guy who worked with me a lot named Dave Gilbert, who was an excellent color guy and went on to do play-by-play himself. There was a reporter from the Oshawa Times, and we used to do the games on CCAR.

And it was great. You were a one-man band, and it was a lot of fun. Well, Magoo says you're the best. So I might have missed those, but I hate me. Magoo, thank you. Thank you. Funny, these early-day Mikes that you worked with have come on to be pretty big deals. So Michael Landsberg, of course, day-wonner, I think, at TSN. Is he a day-wonner?

Yeah, he was a day-wonner, yeah. And, of course, Mike Inglis was like a day-wonner at the Fan fan. I want to say he was the first morning host. Yes, he was. Yeah. Before he went off to, you know, warmer pastures in Miami, but that's crazy. Uh, and you mentioned you were doing this 84 to 87, but were you also, uh, working, uh, for hockey night in Canada in some capacity at that time? Yes, I was a, uh, I finished school, started working at CKAR. So this would have been 1984, 84. And it didn't pay much money. And I was able to go to the station and say, well, can I freelance and do other things? So I did some news. I did the generals games, which was more or less my full-time gig, but I also was a runner for

Hockey Night in Canada. And I would do, I was a runner slash stats. So I got to work with legends like Bob Cole, Dave Hodge, later Ron McLean came onto the picture. Ron sort of came in near the end of my tenure as a runner. But so Dave Hodge was kind of a hero of mine. So where were you when Dave threw the pen? I was beside him pretty much. Because he's been here. I don't know if you heard the Dave Hodge, but before we started recording, he looked me in the eyes and he said,

I don't want to talk about the pen flip. This is what he said to me just before we started recording. I had a lot of pen flip questions. I had the audio. I was like, I'm like, well, I said to him, I just said, you know, I'm talking to Dave Hodge here. I'm like, I'll ask you about the pen flip questions. I had the, I had the audio. I was like, I'm like, um, well, I said to him, I just said, you know, I'm talking to Dave Hodge here. I'm like, uh, I'll ask you about the pen flip and you can say what you like. Like you don't have to say anything. You can just say,

I don't want to talk about that and I'll move on. So I asked him about the pen flip and he, he did a good, I'm going to say he did about 25 to 30 minutes about the pen flip. So he gave me, I know. And I was like, oh my God, this is Dave Hodge. He's one of my favorites, too. But tell me about, A, working with Dave Hodge and being there that day. And any insight you can share on that would be just cool for me. Well, of course, it's in the fog of time now. So and as science and research has proven, everybody has different memories of things that they see, even though they all saw the identical thing. has different memories of things that they see, even though they all saw the identical thing. And you can ask people literally minutes after they've seen it, and everybody will have a slightly different interpretation. Here is mine. I was, one of the jobs was to do out-of-town

scores, watch the out-of-town game for Dave. And you see, this is, you know, analog technology, And you see, this is, you know, analog technology, 1980s. So it was a big deal for Hockey Night in Canada to have a satellite feed of an out-of-town game. On this occasion, it was the Montreal game. I want to say Montreal, Philadelphia, but it could be wrong. And I would watch that game. And when there was a goal scored, I'd say, Dave, there was a goal scored in the Montreal game.

And he'd sort of turn around from what he was doing and take a look at it and he'd say what happened and i'd say uh chelios knock it down at the blue line moved it up and it was a quick shot by naslin top corner so then they when there was a pause bob cole go and now let's go down and hear what dave hodge is watching the other game dave uh and he'd go uh second, second period, Montreal, the puck comes back, Chelios over to Nazlity, scores, Canadians are up two to one and they play it back. So there's, that was my job that night. Well, earlier in the day, the Briar had been running and the curling championship and Dave and, uh, Bob Cole were both big curling fans. And they were sitting in this little sort of ante room by the studio at the old Maple Leaf Gardens watching.

It was called the client room and it had TVs in it and they were sitting and they were watching CBC Sports, watching the briar. And CBC did what back then was a classic CBC thing where local news was sacrosanct. So at six o'clock or 11 o'clock, it didn't matter what was on, you dumped out of it to get to the news. That was, that was the way it was. So they dumped out of, as I recall, extra ends of the briar to go to local news. Yeah. And I remember Dave and Bob sitting in there and to keep in mind, I was a runner.

So it's not like I was sitting in with, hey, guy, what do you think of that? I was, you know, yes, Mr. Hodge, I'll get you a coffee. Was that double cream? So they were both apoplectic, like, what the hell is this? This is bullshit. How can they? One of those. So fast forward to that night.

We were watching the game. As usually happened, the Toronto game would end earlier. And I don't know why that was. So they were late in this Montreal game. And let's say, for sake of argument, the game ended at 7 minutes to 11 when you have to be off. And they would throw to the other game. they would throw to the other game. And the producer was a guy named Doug Sellers,

who was a great young Hockey Night in Canada producer, left, went to work for Fox, and unfortunately he died a few years back. But he was up and coming, very, very good producer, producing the game. So because I was doing that job, I had a headset on so I could hear the truck, the production truck,

and of course Dave was pretty much right beside me. And I'm trying to remember the game ended. We did out of town scores through to break. And then in break in a situation like that is typically when the producer will, okay, here's what we're doing. We're going to do X, Y, and Z. You tell your host and it's your host's job to execute the plan. And what the plan was, Dave, we're going to do X, Y, and Z. You tell your host, and it's your host's job to execute the plan. And what the plan was, Dave, we're going to come back out of break. I want you to throw to extra coverage of the Montreal-Philadelphia game, if that's what it was. And then we're going to stay with that as long as we can. And it was a close game.

It was late in the game. It was 4-3, 3-2, something like that. And Dave, one of the most intelligent people I've ever worked with, flagged it up and said, if they tie it, we better stay because this network is already dumped out of the briar earlier today. And the producer has absolutely no control over this at all. Right. It's, it's the network that decides it. Right. So they go to break, they come back and we now take you to extended coverage. Boom. So we go to the game, the game's going on. Sure enough, somebody ties it.

So it's tied. Now, now we're going to go to overtime. Okay. So then they throw it a break there. We come back on camera. The producer says something along the lines. Okay, Dave, um, we're going to run through the out-of-town scores and then you got to come back on camera and say you know basically apologize

that we can't show you the end of the game as a result of network commitments and yada yada so dave said something along the lines again as my recollection is don't put me on camera and make me do that don't i'm not going to come on and tell people we're not showing the end of this game after we've already done this to curling fans. The producer plays his card. Producer's in charge, as he should be. Hosts host, producers produce.

That has to be the pecking order. And the producer says, you're the host of the show. Here's what we're going to do. We're doing out-of-town scores. You come on and wrap the show up. That's the way it is. So we go through. We go through the out-of-town scores.

He comes back on camera, obviously disgusted. The whole bit where he looked off camera and said, are we going to that game? Are we going back to the game? Was 100%, to my recollection, theatrical. He knew exactly what we were doing. He'd been told a couple of times.

And the only guy off camera when he looked off camera would have been the floor director who wouldn't have had a clue what we were going to do. So then he looked back and said, no no apparently we're not going to that game and so we will have to wait and see who won the game and who's responsible for the way we do things around here flip the pen in the air and that was the end of the show he got up walked over grabbed his coat and left and that was the last thing he ever did for hockey net in canada that is my recollection apologies dave if i remembered it differently than you And that was the last thing he ever did for HockeyNet in Canada. That is my recollection. Apologies, Dave, if I remembered it differently than you,

but that was my recollection. It's funny, when Batista hit that big three-run homer and flipped his bat, we were talking about, I bought a t-shirt with the Batista bat flip on it, and then I was joking that we should have t-shirts with the pen flip. This is an iconic

Canadian media story. But you know what? And this is why he was one of my broadcasting heroes. And it is proven as so often is the case in these things. He was on the right side of history because it is now, whether it's CBC or anybody, it is verboten to dump out of a live sporting event before there is a proper result.

You just don't do that anymore. And I think he was the start and his digging in his heels and it cost him his job. The man's drenched in integrity. I picked that up from a 90-minute chat with him. I know very recently The Reporters was canceled and I don't have any intelligence on what happened there, but I, I sense that perhaps that's another example of Hodge, uh, basically having principles that he wouldn't compromise. I suspect I don't have any, uh. No, that would certainly be the, I haven't talked to Dave in years, uh, since we used to work

together at TSN. Uh, I have the utmost admiration for him as a broadcaster and a professional. And I have no doubt that he probably just wasn't happy with how things were being done. And he just said, I'm done. So he was, my point being though, he was on the right side of history and taking that stand was the right thing to do. And there are, you can count on probably one hand

and have four fingers left over the guys who would have had the balls to have done that. And congrats, you know, full marks to Dave. Yes, for sure. For sure.

He, by the way, speaking of music lovers, there's a guy huge. Yeah. He's probably moshing tonight somewhere in the city with the kids. I want to get you to TSN, but just really briefly,

you're on Global, right? You're hosting OHL Games of the Week in 86-87 on Global? Yeah, that was again sort of the scramble of I was doing a bunch of different jobs at the time as a freelancer kind of waiting to see what would stick. There was a time when I did a lot of

hosting, and even on TSN, I think well, I know I did more hosting than play-by-play. And yeah, I remember doing the global OHL game of the week, which I had to stop doing because I moved out west to take a job briefly. But that was very enjoyable. I love junior hockey, still do. And out west, that's Calgary, right? That's CFAC? Yes, CFAC at the time, Channel 2 and 7. And they offered me a full-time, well-paying gig. So this is 1987.

And they offered me a job for, at that time, the very hefty sum. It was $50,000. I know that's a lot, only because I'm going to drop John Gallagher's name a couple of times because I'm reading his book right now. But he says when Steve Anthony and him were really close buddies, I think they were roommates for a while, but when Steve Anthony got the gig at Much Music, like a national gig, it was for $40,000. That's the kind of money that was being tossed around. But you know again that's fifty thousand dollars in 1987 yeah well it was a lot of money it was probably like a hundred thousand dollars no i guess my point is that is a lot like i uh meant to meet that with that

for a guy who was freelancing at you know probably half a dozen different jobs uh and not making that uh yeah that was like wow okay here we You know, finally it's, you know, my ship has come in. I think you could buy a house in Calgary for 50,000 bucks back then. Who knows? Probably. Yeah, probably. How do you end up at where most of us see you for, you know, get to know you for the first time? Uh, how do you end up at TSN? Well, I had been at TSN. I wasn't a day one-er, but I was like a day 60-er or whatever. TSN went on the air in September of 1984, as I recall, and I started freelancing for them in February of 1985. It was one of this sort of box of freelance things that I was doing. I was an editorial assistant in the newsroom. And back then, it was a very different time.

This was a brand new sports station that was on the air. And I was just out of school. So aside from working in the newsroom, I also got the opportunity because I was an on-air guy on radio. And they said, well, we need a guy to go and get some sound at the leaf practice. Can you do that? Yeah. We need a guy to do a report. Can you do that?

Yes. So I started reporting for them on camera stuff. And then that led to doing the occasional update on the desk. Sports desk. And then that led to, so I was doing a lot of that. Left went to Calgary. And I was evidently still on their radar. And there was a gentleman named Jim Thompson who was the, I want to say he was the executive producer of programming at the time. He's dead now, but at the time he was the guy who brought me back.

I remember he called and said, look, we want a full-time guy for Sports Desk. Would you be interested? And I was like, ah, like I just moved out here. My wife-to-be or my girlfriend at the time is moving out to be with me. She's, you know, she's coming out. I don't know. And then I just remember thinking this could be my big opportunity. And so one of the toughest conversations I've ever had was going in and telling the gentleman in Calgary who brought me out, and they treated me very well, and saying, yeah, I'm going back to Toronto. And they were none too happy about that. Understood. But you had an offer you could not refuse. It was, and I came back and started at TSN full-time in

October of 1987. I mean, I loved, I still do watch a lot of TSN, but I remember you from TSN, and I'm trying to think, like I remember, that was the age of Jim Van Horn and Vic Router and John Wells.

Absolutely. Gino Retta, was he there yet or not yet? No, Gino, Gino started as a, uh, as an editorial assistant in the newsroom and sort of, you know, I mean, there's a success story. Uh, you know, Gino was working as a, as a, I believe, I think Gino worked as a short order cook. Like he was, he was broadcasting was not his trade and he was working as a, an editorial assistant with Sportsline, which was a huge show, as you know, back then.

I talked to Hepsi today. There you go. And then, and then maybe he'll remember Gino. And then Gino came over and started doing the same job with us at TSN. And then one thing led to another. And I mean, now he's a, he's. And I should know that I had Gino on the show.

I got to go re-listen, but it's, he probably told me the whole story and I've forgotten those details. But, but I guess those guys, is there any other names I'm missing from those early, early days at TSN that are, you know, still, still kicking around? Just, they were such a.

Well, the two big guys were john wells and um and jim van horn they were the two big guys there was a uh a woman sportscaster named terry libel who was a former equestrian rider and had gotten into sportscasting she came over from the cbc there was a guy named steve cooney uh who just kind of went off. I don't remember Steve. Steve was there for a while. Vic Router came on a little bit later on. Do you do a Vic? I heard earlier you did a bit of Bob Cole, and I was thinking Mike Richards should watch out because you're going, you know, Mike Richards is famous for his Bob Cole, but you have a pretty good Bob Cole yourself.

Well, I used to work with Mike on the ill-fated team morning show. Oh, we're going to get to that, Paul, don't worry. I'm not going to say much about it. But Mike and I used to have a good old chuckle because we would, you know, he'd go, oh, baby, right there. And I'd say, no, no, I do the best Bob Cole. And he'd say, no, oh, no, stop stealing my, and we'd try to out Bob Cole one another. He does the best Bob Cole. I'm going to mention John Gallagher again.

The guy sent me that book and i can't stop talking about it but he talks about i guess um yeah mike richard he worked with mike richards too and mike richards doing this like bob cole ranking woman or whatever or yeah he was like a bit of a like a hound or whatever no no no it wasn't that at all we we did it we did a show uh he he it was a an old bit that mike had done for a long time and and it lived on this morning show that mike and i did on the team and it was it was we did it on fridays and it was called bob cole chicks i like that's what it was chicks i like and so he we would play a clip from a movie and you'd have to guess who it was and it was it was innocent enough

it wasn't uh it was yeah i know You're right. It was chicks he liked. But do you do a make the final? Do you got any Vic Rauter? That's not in your repertoire. I think most people can do a little bit of make the final. Leafs four, Habs one. That's great. But no one like Don Landry, actually.

Don Landry owns the... I think he's the leading Vic Rauter impersonator, I believe. I remember. With his dueling Vics. Yeah, Don used to do the morning show, and he was very good. He was very good. But some of those old TSN guys, I don't know. I think the oldest guy standing there, Peter Watts was another guy, but he was a day one-er.

But I guess it would be, I mean. I mean, Landsberg's still there because he's on the radio. Yeah, sort of by default because he's on the radio, but actually on air, I think it would be Vic Rauter. I think you might be right, yeah. And Vic wasn't a day one-er. Vic was like, he came in, I want to say they'd been on a good eight months to a year before he came over there, is my recollection.

Yeah, you might be right. He's the last standing TV TSN guy. And then Landsberg gets an asterisk beside him because he's still there, but he's doing mornings on 1050. It's a sore spot with you. I won't talk too much about mornings at 1050. All right, so you're at TSN, and you end up doing play-by-play for the NHL on TSN,

I guess, 89 to 2001. That's a long run. Tell me how that comes and tell me about that experience. Well, my first real, I did a lot of play-by-play, you know, bits and bobs. I would do some CIAU stuff. I would do some, you know, fill-in. And I used to do junior hockey games. Bob McKenzie and I did, uh, CHL Sunday night, which I want to say started in either 19, I think it started in 1990.

And so I was doing more and more hockey play by play. And then they would start to toss me the odd NHL bone, uh, because Jim Hewson, who was the guy, funny how life never changed. Yeah, I was going to say, between the Bob Cole earlier and now Jim Hewson, it's like it all comes around. Nothing changes, right. So Jim was the guy, and I was sort of the second guy. And Jim, at the time, for a while there, was the hardest working man in Canadian TV. He did Blue Jays baseball and NHL hockey. So there would, at certain times of the year, inevitably be conflicts, and I would go and

do those games. So when Jim left TSN in 1994 to go back to Vancouver, I was given the number one slot, if you will. And then we lost the NHL sort of cable package. This is all getting very broadcasty. But I like this inside baseball. So pretend no one else is listening and you're just talking. Okay. So I was the second guy from 1990 or 89 or whatever until 94 when Jim left. Jim left, I became the number one NHL guy. Then we lost the national cable rights, which at the time there was only one sports channel. There was TSN until Sportsnet decided they were going to launch. And to launch, they needed a property. So they came in and went hard after the national hockey cable package, because of course, in Canadaada hockey rules in terms of sports

and eyeballs they got it so in 97 we lost the national package but we still had regional habs games and leafs games joe bowen did the regional leafs games and i did the regional habs games and i continued doing that until i left in 2001 and but the main thing that I did at TSN that I, my most fond memories of being there, and it was a great, great place to work, was doing the international hockey. From 1990 until 2001, I did almost every international hockey game of consequence that was on TV because we had the rights. So I did 11 world junior championships. I did, I want to say eight world championships, women's world championships, and all this great international hockey stuff. So that's my fond memory of my time

at TSN. Well, in 1994, you called the world championship. I guess technically we call this the IIHF World Championships. And you called it, and I saw it live. And I remember the call, and I repeat that call often. And I couldn't find the call because I wanted to play it. But then I got some help on Twitter. So I want to thank a couple of people. Alex Blair for pointing me to a clip, a recent clip about Paul Correa that opens with you making this call

that I was looking for. But then Bill McMartin sent me a cleaner clip and I'm going to play it now and then we're just going to chat about it. So let's listen to you back in 1994. Mika Niemann at number 40 will shoot for Finland. He must score. Or Canada wins it.

There it is! It is over! Canada, world champions! It's still a good game. We're going to go ahead and get the other one. World champions. Okay, I love the, it is over, Paul Romanuk. That is probably, would you say that might be your signature call? Well, I don't use it anymore. Well, you burned it now.

Yeah, oh no, absolutely though, Mike, you're right. I mean, you can't, it's long since retired, but I people, it was 1994. Our team, Canada, had not won a world championship in 33 years. We had not won an Olympic gold medal in eons. And we were just coming off of the Lillehammer Olympics in 1994, where we lost in the gold medal game in a shootout to Sweden. That was the famous Peter Forsberg postage stamp. I remember it well. So you put all that together, and this was a pretty special moment. We, Canada, had a team in the gold medal game. Lillehammer was still very fresh in the memory of losing in the gold medal shootout to Sweden. And many of the

same guys, Paul Correa being one of them, were on both of those teams. And so when Canada won it, it really was, it was over. It was the end of a long, since then we've gone on to win a number of world championships and we've won the Olympics and so on and so forth. But that was the first. We didn't even, back at that time, we didn't even dominate the world junior to the extent that we do now. So it was a big, big deal. And I still smile when I hear the call

because the bit of hesitation there where I say, Neiman must score. And I just wanted, I double checked my notes because I wanted to make sure I had, because it's very, you get caught up in the excitement that I had. My notes were right. And that if Ranford stopped,

then Canada won. Cause you'd hate to go Neiman and must score or Canada wins the gold. And then, Oh no, no, sorry. You don't want to have like, yeah,

that'd be, uh, yes. So that's the hesitation there. And I still smile when I listened to it. And then the call, there was nothing written down. There was nothing. I think as a matter of fact, yes. So that's the hesitation there, and I still smile when I listen to it. And then the call, there was nothing written down. There was nothing. I think, as a matter of fact, I did have a couple of notes of something just to spark. I wanted to have something significant to say if they want it,

but foolishly, I didn't anticipate the game going to a shootout. I had a call maybe for the game ending in regulation time. So it was just, I couldn't think of anything else to say. It was over. It reminds me of Tom Cheek's Touch Them All Joe, which he said that because I guess the crowd, they were hounding him on the field, and he was basically telling Joe, with all those people,

make sure you touch all the bases on your way home. So that's what he's describing. I always joke about Touch Them All Joe as the most famous call nobody heard, right right because we all watched it on tv yeah me include i was uh i was hosting the blue jays uh games back then on tsn and i i was in a studio with pat tabler and we were watching the game on the monitor and back then uh you know cheapo canadian tv wouldn't have their own commentators doing the game so it was was the American feed on Canadian TV. And we were listening to the two American announcers.

I can't even remember who the play-by-play guy was, to be honest. And it was huge. I mean, I remember Tabler and I- Tim McCarver, maybe? McCarver would have been the colored guy. I remember Tabler and I jumping. We were going, wow, I can't believe this.

This is unbelievable. But no, we didn't hear cheap. it's probably like the guy who was doing tv when the giants win the pennant call was on radio oh you know where i thought you were going there was when when foster hewitt calls the uh wild stab for it and fell because i believe bob cole was doing the radio yeah coley was doing he did it on cbc. And now you hear that, and it's cool. But everybody talks about the Hewitt call, of course. That's a legendary one. But your It Is Over, I wanted to hear that. I've been trying to get you on the show for a long time, by the way.

So I'm glad you're finally here, because for years, and when I started having people over to have these chats, I made a list of people I really wanted. You were really close to the top of that list. I said, I need Paul Romanek. I got so many questions for Romy. But it is over. An iconic call of, you know,

international Canadian hockey. And I'm glad I got the audio and could play it there because what a moment that was. And I remember Luke Robitaille, I believe, had a couple of big shootout goals, I think. Yeah, Robitaille, as I recall,

Canada scored. I think Robitaille, as I recall, Canada scored. I think Robitaille scored first, then the Finns missed. And then I want to say, I want to say it was Joe Sackick who scored. And Canada was up 2-0 and it was like, okay, here we go. And then the Finns came back and it was 2-1 and then Canada missed. But anyway, it came it came they went to extra shots right and then so Robitaille did it again Robitaille did it again and he scored again uh and then Neiman or Neenama uh had to score for the Finns and then it Ranford made the stop yeah

Ranford made the big save what Gary Green Gary that's Gary Green beside you yes it is yeah and I think later in the clip because I watched the full thing but I didn't cut it all out but I think Gary Green, that's Gary Green beside you. Yes, it is. Yeah. And I think later in the clip, because I watched the full thing, but I didn't cut it all out, but I think he makes, he thought that Curry would take that shot. He said, because of all the pressure you have to score, that's a Yari Curry moment for Finland. And he was surprised they didn't have Curry taking that shot. It all worked out. So no complaints here, but can you tell me a bit about working with Gary Green? Any Gary Green stories you can share? Well, Gary was a real mentor to me.

He was the first color guy I had when I started doing a lot of NHL games. And he's still a very good friend. And he's one of the true gentlemen and nice guys in the business. I have so many fond memories of working with Gary. He was completely unselfish in taking this relatively young guy in NHL circles and getting me on his inner circle, getting me time with general managers and coaches, and just being with Gary gave you credibility.

And I've never forgotten that. And we had so many good times. I mean, most of them, I mean, the thing is, Mike, and I think anybody in this business would tell you this, you don't remember the games that much when you look back because the games are all a blur and you remember oh man that was a big goal there big goal there and somebody can tweak a memory you remember the really big ones i remember you know canada's uh fifth gold medal in a row at the at the world junior championship i remember canada winning at 1994 at the world championship

you remember stuff like that, but just the general games you don't, but what you do remember is you remember the traveling and the dinners and the laughs. And, uh, I mean, one with Gary, uh, you know, people may or may not find amusing, but, uh, back in the, back in the day at TSN, they used to have a private jet in order that the the playoff crew they didn't do it for luxury reasons they did it for economic reasons uh they would get a little not a big one they get a little tiny we used to call it the cigar tube uh lear jet the smallest lear you can get it had i want to say six seats eight seats max oh wow that is small so we would but what it allowed us to do is we could do two playoff series.

So they could sell two playoff series and make more money doing two playoff series. So you'd finish a game. You'd whip to the little private airfield. You get on, you take off to the next city where you were doing a game the next day, get in at two in the morning, go grab a sleep, get up and lather, rinse, repeat for two weeks. And so we did that. And then we were due to go right over to the world championships afterwards. So we finished a game.

Last game was in Anaheim. Finished up, flew back to Toronto, had a day in Toronto, just a day. I went home, dropped off my laundry, came back to the airport, flew over to Finland where the world championships were, and then got picked up at the airport in Finland. You got some sleep on the plane, driven to the rink, and we did a game right off the bat. Then after that, we go back and we sit down, we go to the greener and typical Gary fashion goes, come on, Rome, we're going out for a quick dinner. I said, oh, Gary, I'm, I'm completely, he goes, ah, we're going to grab some dinner.

It must have been an afternoon game that we did. We go to this place, some fancy restaurant in Finland, and we go and we sit down. Very expensive place. Guy comes over, they serve Russian food. And Gary goes, do you guys have any caviar? And the guy goes, yes, we do, sir. How do you serve it? And he goes, comes uh you know

comes in individual servings because how much is a serving the guy said whatever 55 marks finish marks and gary says we'll take six and i just looked at him and he says he goes those bastards have put us through the ringer the last two weeks. They're paying for a big meal. That's great. That's Gary. That's great. You don't see, I don't think I've seen Gary in a long time. Uh, he doesn't have much of a media presence right now. No, he, he's done in the media business. He did, uh, TSN when they got the NHL rights back after I'd left went a different direction, as they say. And then Gary did some work for NHL Network. And he was there for quite a long time. And then I think it just didn't work for him anymore because Gary is a very successful partner in Stadium Consultants International, which is the big architectural group in Toronto who build stadiums all over the world. And so it was taking away from his time with them. And that's what Gary does full-time now.

Okay. Very good. Very good. I got my Gary Green update. That's excellent. By the way, you mentioned Blue Jay Telecasts and Andrew Sheehy writes me and says, show Paul Romanuk this clip when he appears on your podcast this week. And then he goes on to say Jim Hewson would be an awesome guest on the podcast as well. So I'm not going to show you this clip, but I will play some of this audio I extracted from the clip here. First, it's nostalgia. Let's hear the old music here. Oh, yeah. Labatt Blue Jays baseball on TSN. TSN's baseball tonight, the road to the World Series. Jim Van Horn.

Yeah. Paul Romanoch. Hello, I'm Paul Romanek. The Toronto Blue Jays looking behind a door that no other Toronto Blue Jays team has ever been able to look behind. Three times they have tried to push through that door in 1985 and 1989. And again in 1991, the door was barred each time. But they finally pushed their way through, and I'm sure they have to love what they see behind that door. What they see is the end of we made our first World Series. So what was it like doing the Blue Jay games on TSN?

I liked it. As I said earlier, I think, Mike, I did a lot of hosting at TSN. I hosted Sports Desk for many years. It was a regular on the 11 and the 2 a.m. show with Mark Jones a lot of the time and other people. and Expos games for many, many years. And I even started off hosting hockey before I did play-by-play. I was a studio guy. So I really enjoyed it. And the Blue Jays, it was kind of, I loved doing the Jays

because I was a big baseball fan at the time. But the one lousy thing about doing, being a baseball host when you're not on site, when you're just in the studio, is it might be one of the most boring jobs in broadcasting because you would you would throw to the hey, here we are, Blue Jays with a big game this afternoon. And they've got David Wells on the mound going up against Frank Tanana. And let's take you out of the park here, Jim Euston and Buck Martinez, guys. And then you didn't show up again. We used to do like a little 30-second piddly update after the third inning and the fifth inning and then the seventh,

and then you'd show up if there was a postgame show. So you sat around all night and did like 90 seconds of work, and it could just be excruciatingly boring. And you're in aging court, right? No, at that time we were at, it's a car dealership now. We were at 1155 Leslie Street. That was the first home of TSN.

And then later it moved up to Shepherd Avenue. Okay. And then out to Agent Court. Gotcha, gotcha. And speaking of you doing different things, you know, we're going to get to like, there's so much. We got some Raptor stuff coming up.

But in 1992, you covered the Vanier Cup with TSN. And I have a note here that you were literally picked up and carried around the field in celebration. So Queens fans, I guess. Yes. What was that like? I want to say it was like the CIAU back then, uh, it was a CIAU back then, but it was like the OUAA final or something.

And I remembered doing the game. It was, it was at the Skydome, I think. Um, I want to say up, but the, the, the thing I remember about it is, uh, I was down on the field, so I was never on site for baseball, but of course, bloody CIA, you football, let's put it right down there beside the field. So I was there and I had on at the time, uh, which was, uh, you know, it was pretty fancy cutting edge technology. I had on a wireless mic because most mics back then were hardwired. So I had on a little mic, uh, transmitting pack and the microphone and it was wired up in an earpiece so I could hear directions from the truck.

And so I was down there and they'd done the, maybe the presentation of the trophy or something. And anyway, there was this like swell of fans, Queens fans, I guess, who were down there by the, and one of them, like, you know, they picked me up and I was body surfing along the crowd and they're passing me along and there's no security. No. So I was just kind of going with it and having a laugh. And then we, we got off the air and I went, uh, walking back in. I remember walking back into the studio and the audio guy or the tech guy said, where's the, uh, where's the wireless battery pack or where's the wireless pack? And I just looked at him with this look that said, are you out of your mind? I just got body surfed by a couple

thousand people out there. I have no idea where it was, so I don't know where it ended up. It got ripped off my belt and crushed in the field somewhere, I expect. But that's what I remember about that. I think it was the last CIA U game I ever did. Well, that's the addendum here.

You never covered a Vanier Cup again, is how it says here. But that's crazy. Never a dull moment. And speaking of that, Olympics. So you covered Olympics. Yeah, I think I've done, I want to say five or six Olympics.

The most memorable were the first couple I did where I was the basketball play-by-play guy. And I was lucky enough. I worked with, I want to say, Brian Heaney. And I did the year in Sydney. So that would have been 2000, the year that Steve Nash was with the Canadian team, the point guard for the Canadian team.

And they won on a great march. I think they lost. I want to say they lost to France in the quarterfinals. And that was a great, great year. I did basketball the next couple of Olympics after that, but Canada didn't have a team. So, you know, it wasn't as big a deal as that first one was, which was fantastic. Jay Triano was the coach, and Steve Nash was like the guy.

Todd McCullough, I want want to say was the big power forward uh so it was that was a lot of fun a lot of fun and now we're gonna touch on a subject you don't want to speak much about but i have to ask you just a few quick questions about the team 1050 okay so you're comfortable i see you drank half your six packpack. Yeah. So you co-hosted the morning show with the aforementioned Mike Richards on Team 1050. Tell us why you quit your gig at TSN for the Team 1050. Well, I've talked about this before, and it gets kind of tiresome because it's so long ago, really, but at the time, uh, I was at TSN. I'd been there for quite a number of years and I was on the road a lot. And there were a number of reasons. That was one of them, why this team thing started. Uh, and you'll recall back at the start of our

conversation, when I said, like I started in radio. Radio has always been my first love. Like I've, it's just, it's a great medium when it's done well, which isn't very often in my opinion. But anyway, so. That's why we have podcasts. Yeah, and it is. And podcasts, there's a fascinating discussion,

which I don't want to get off into and sidetrack you too much but i mean that this is this is like the early days of radio i think in the 1920s where there was just a proliferation of so much material and you can pick and choose what you want i think this is what podcasting is right now you know you're on the you have been for quite some time but on the cutting edge of this uh right down to when you think about it, Mike, even the ads, like the old style ads where the guy'd go, I want to take a moment, folks, to tell you about Jim Neighbors' shovels. And, you know, I was down there last week and I picked up a car and I'll tell you, they looked after me really, really well. Well, that's how they used to do ads.

The live reads as opposed to the. Exactly. And that's the way it is on podcasts. Now, whether it's you or Malcolm Gladwell or Canada Land or any of the podcasts, that's what they do. But anyway, to answer your question, at the time, I was ready for a change. And there was this great opportunity that came up with this new, they were going to try a coast-to-coast all-sports radio network with using Chum AM affiliates. Chum was an established company. They had networks. They had a network in place, and it was very appealing. there was no travel. And it was just so appealing to me to say, you know what,

wouldn't it be great to just wake up in my own bed every day, make more money than I'm making at TSN and do something that I love, which is radio. And going back in time, given the same set of circumstances, I would make the same decision. I went there for a variety of reasons that I don't need to go into. The whole plan didn't work, and they ended up bailing on it after 18 months. So after 18 months, they went back to oldies or whatever it was, and there were not only me, but many other very talented people were put out of work. And so that's how that all finished up, and then I sort of bopped around and freelanced and eventually landed on my feet with some other

gigs and that was fine. But that's why I went there. And I always tell people, and Mike and I still talk occasionally, Mike Richards, um, that 18 months were amongst the most enjoyable 18 months of my entire broadcast career career because it was just, it was so much fun. We had a laugh every day. Nobody listened, but we entertained ourselves and we really, it was a very enjoyable experience. Unfortunately, didn't finish up the way I would have liked or anybody else would have liked. Nobody could, you know, hindsight's 20-20, but in the time you made, I think just hearing you describe it right now, like who wouldn't make that decision, you know?

Less travel, more money. It's chum, right? Like this is a monster radio company. Yeah, exactly. There's no reason. Like, anyway, I know I've had Jim Van Horn on a couple of times. And he talks a bit more about this. I had Stephen Brunt on recently to talk

we talked about oh yeah yeah yeah stephen was there too yeah and of course um uh was steve simmons there or am i that maybe i confused my wires but he might have been uh but i don't recall steve being there he might have been but i'm not sure but uh in the opinion of stephen brunt the mistake was being a national show. People in Toronto don't want to hear about the Flames. The local is where it's at, in Brunt's opinion, when it comes to sports. It is, and it's very funny. And this is one of the things that when you try to do something that has been done successfully in America, the United States, and you try to bring it up here, it doesn't

always work. And there can be a number of reasons. The late night talk show format, try that Mike Bullard might have, it failed and it was doomed to failure simply because Toronto is not LA or New York and you don't get the roster of very talented stars. You end up talking to Darcy Tucker. Exactly. You know, you do.

So it's no fault of Mike's or the best, the, the, the, the late night variety show, a member of CBC, Ralph Ben, again, it's not going to work because Toronto is not New York or LA as much as it would like to expire, aspire to be so. So in the case of this, what works very in the u.s is national sports radio espn does it nbc does it it's not it's it's very it's a successful format in the states but in canada for those reasons that steven said it doesn't the the guy driving to work in calgary does not in fact in in calgary to use that as a specific example, he downright resents hearing anything about the Toronto Maple Leafs.

This show, I called it Toronto Mike and it's very Toronto centric. And I've been told that people in Canada outside of Toronto don't particularly like Toronto. Like there seems to be, it seems to be a thing to do with hate Toronto outside of. Yeah. And that's, and I think, so Stephen hit on that. That's why we, you know why you couldn't go on. And then you couldn't be all things to everybody, and Stephen's probably exactly right.

Stephen actually had a positive experience when it came to the breakup with Chum because he didn't feel, he told me, I don't think he's ever put this in the public before, but he said he doesn't think he was owed anything in terms of severance. And he got packaged, he got money anyways. So he felt he came out with money he doesn't think he was owed anything in terms of severance. And he got money anyways. So he felt he came out with money he didn't expect from this. Meanwhile, Mike Richards came on and had a very negative experience.

And he had apparently had a very... Oh, no, Jim Van Horn had a very negative... I can't remember Mike's story. But Jim Van Horn had a very negative experience. Did this whole experience leave a bad taste in your mouth? Or was it nothing ventured, nothing gained, and you moved on? Yes, it did, but I don't want to talk about it anymore. It didn't end well, and the thing speaks for itself.

And it is tough to be the second guy in, because 590 had been there a while now. I mean, TSN's experiencing this now, that it's tough to be the second guy in. Yeah90 had been there a while now. And I mean, TSN's experiencing this now, that it's tough to be the second guy in. Yeah, it is. And it's funny, you know, people, you know, history repeats itself, of course. And what's the other cliche?

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And it's so funny, you know, seeing it come in. And I think the bottom line, Mike, is that just, again, we're not the United States. We're not New York. We're not L.A. I think we're the fifth biggest media market in North America. But that's not very big. And I don't think it's a big enough market to support two full-time sports stations.

support two full-time sports stations. Uh, and you know, TSN right now, it's, it's kind of just from, as a listener, I mean, they're, they're running canned programming in, in daylight hours, which, you know, tells you a lot about the, their commitment to it, which, you know, I would say probably by virtue of that fact alone, they've, they've grown tired of investing money in it. I would think. Last nugget from Brunt before we leave the 1050, uh, by virtue of that fact alone, they've, they've grown tired of investing money in it. I would think. Last nugget from Brunt before we leave the 10 50, uh, the team 10 50 behind last nugget is that Brunt disclosed when he was here

that, uh, he tried to broker a deal between the chump people and TSN to brand this as a TSN radio. Like he said, he tried to do that. Like as a last chance to save, it would be making it TSN branded.

Yeah. I, I wasn't aware uh how how much steven had to do with that at the time keith pelly was the visionary uh broadcast guy uh at tsn at the time before he left and went on to you know be the guy overseeing the olympics and and then rogers media and so on and now he's with the european golf tour but uh at the time yeah i know keith had had talks with uh with jim waters about hey can we work something out here and maybe that and keith would be a guy if there's a guy you should have on if he's ever in town he's

he's from this neck of the woods as well but he's fascinating guy he's keith is he's had a lot of hits he's had a lot of misses but but he's a guy who will take chances. And I don't doubt a word of what Stephen says is that Keith would have looked at that and said, hey, why don't we try this? And it's too bad it didn't come together. And I hear that Pelly guy put together a rather large hockey deal for Rodgers that we'll talk about shortly that you might be aware of. But in this time after the team, you did a bunch of stuff, but you did the play-by-play for Argos. Yeah, I did.

That was Keith again. Keith is a guy who I've known since school days. He's a friend, somebody I've known for a long time. Keith at that time was president or something with the Argos. That was back, Cinnamon and Sokoloski were the two owners. They hired Keith to come in and be the president. And Keith was revamping the radio. He hired me to come in. I would never profess to be a great football play-by-play guy, but I did it for a season with Pete Martin. And then I left. And I think Mike Hogan,

who's bounced in and out of that job, but Mike Hogan sort of landed in there. Hoagie, by the way, since you mentioned his name, he wants me to ask you a question at the very end of this episode. So I have a Hoagie question for Paul Romanuk, but that's at the end of this episode.

But yeah, he's been doing play-by-play since, I think. And he is such a great argos play-by-play guy um and i was so happy that i think it was the start of this year where they were going to uh to to just simulcast television uh and then there was a bit of a hue and cry oh yeah yeah well thank goodness they did goodness they did because you're not going to get a TV call. But, you know, they don't send him on the road this season. The regular season, CFL season that just ended,

Hoagie only did home games from BMO. They didn't send him on the road with JJ. Yeah, I asked him about that last time I was here. That's a bad call. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Bad call. It's a bad call.

Either do it or don't would be my opinion, but I don't get a vote. Pat Meat on Twitter wants me to ask you about your days calling Raptor Games. That was, yeah, that was the job I left when my wife and I moved to the UK. And it was, again, it was one of the, and I've been so lucky in, in this business. Um, but it was one of the, the great experiences I had. It was the, the first time since, you know, doing the jet Oshawa generals games, but really that I was sort of the voice of a team. And, uh, I'm not counting the Argos cause I didn't do that for very long. And when you're the voice of an NBA team,

you travel with the team. You're like one of the team. And it was, I mean... So more caviar is what you're saying. Well, the funny thing is that one of the most grinding things about this job is, and it's, boo-hoo, but it's first world problems to be sure, but is the travel. Anybody who travels a lot will tell you that travel is a pain in the ass. Any modicum of enjoyment that was in it has been sucked out by the airlines and the airports and all the other bullshit that you have to go through when you travel.

So the great thing about that job was you would drive out to the private airfield at Pearson. You would get on. You clear customs like, you know, customs was cursory. Yep. Everything's you were with the Raptors. You walked on. Everybody got a business class size seat. There was food on the plane.

You know, like it was just nothing like air travel. Now, the plane left on time. Again, nothing like air travel now. The plane left on time. Again, nothing like air travel now. You'd go, you'd do the game or whatever. And if you were lucky enough to be in the East Coast and, say, Boston, for example, was the last night of the road trip, you would finish the game in Boston. And, Mike, I could make last call at Stoney's. So, like, the game would end, I don't would end like 10 p.m or something yeah game ends

at uh game ends at 10 o'clock let's say uh so it's wheels up uh by the you know at latest 11 30 latest so you're landing in toronto at uh out by pearson at about 12 30 there's no like you know there's no big you don't have to go through the terminal. You basically get off, you walk out. In the winter, the guys at the terminal would warm your car up for you. You'd get in the car. So we'd land at 1230, be in the car driving, and I could swing by Stoney's and catch last call. So, I mean, that was a great gig i worked with a wonderful partner named paul jones who still does the games and jonesy and i did the games and we had our sort of we had our secret saying which was uh i'll let the secret out now the secret saying was below the

radar meaning that radio is not tv so it's not nearly as as, when you're the TV voice, it's a lot more high profile. Radio, cab drivers, people in cars, you know, it's not the main thing. So if you do your job, keep your nose clean, and stay below the radar, you could do that job for a long time. So that's what we used to say to one another.

Sounds amazing. And then, but you, here, I got a song for this here. So I got a transition theme song here. This is, we're going to hear a lot of Kirstie McCall soon because she's on the, of course, the Pogue song you hear at Christmas all the time. But this is A New England because,

oh, let me give Kirstie a minute. And it was a great song. But you, and this is, as you said, this is 2005 or so. You tell me, you leave the gig with the Raptors because you moved to London, England with your wife. Yes, yes, yes. My wife at the time worked for Coca-Cola. Never heard of them. My wife at the time worked for Coca-Cola.

Never heard of them. And she was, Coca-Cola are big on moving their employees around if they want to. It's a great company to work for. And she had said, yeah, we would consider moving. So a position came up with Coca-Cola Europe, which is headquartered out of London. And she was interviewed and was offered the job. And we thought about it. And it was one of those, I was doing the Raptors on the radio, which was a great, great job. But it wasn't like I was in the big chair at Hockey Night in Canada. and she had this opportunity to be the equivalent of in the big chair at

hockey night in Canada. It was a job with a big global company in a global city, and it was a fantastic opportunity for her. So we decided, uh, to say, yeah, you know what,

let's go do this. We may never get another chance. And we went over there and lived for almost 10 years. And it was the, one of the greatest experiences of my life. It her turn yeah that's i love this that you you basically you pause your you know toronto-based sports media career and it becomes your wife's turn uh to you know follow you know enhance her career if you will progress in her career in jolly old england which is not an opportunity everyone gets.

That sounds amazing. It was amazing. And we always loved the city, London. I still think it's the greatest city in the world. And that's nothing against Toronto. I was going to say, even better than this city. Well, no, I know Torontonians get very, and Canadians get very defensive if they're not the best or whatever.

And Toronto is a great city. It's one of the greatest cities in the world. And I love living here and I'm lucky to live here. But London is the greatest city in the world just for, it's a global capital. And you feel it every time you go out in London. It's an amazing place and we love living there. Did you ever miss sunlight? Or is this a myth?

Because I only hear, you know, I hear that you get your whatever, two days of sun and they're wonderful days, you know, but they're few and far between. Nobody moves to England for the climate. I'll tell you that. It's not. The climate here is much better. And I can speak from authority. The choice you're making, and it's something a Vancouver person would say to you, the choice you're making is we get winters here that are a little too long and can be a little too cold.

However, you do get many brilliant winter days with that big, gorgeous, high blue sky. And it might be minus 10 or minus 15, but there's sunshine and it's beautiful. Minus 10 or minus 15, but there's sunshine and it's beautiful. In London, from sort of, you know, late November, December, this time of year, through until early February, you get low gray cloud cover. And it can be depressing. You don't get cold temperatures. You get 5 degrees, 10 degrees, might get down to 2 or 3, but it rarely dips below zero.

But it's damp and it's gray. And if you suffered from, what's it called, seasonal affective disorder, that would probably not be a good move to relocate to London. And their summers aren't as nice. It's a very temperate climate. But again, you don't go to London for the weather. It was funny, when we moved over there, our first summer, which would have been the summer of 06, and it was a gorgeous summer. It was like sunny, hot. It was like an Ontario summer. And people over in the UK typically will go on a summer holiday.

So in the summer, they will go over to southern Italy, southern Spain, southern France, and they will go. And we just thought it was bizarre. Carrie and I, Carrie, my wife, we were like, what the hell is with these people? Why would you, the weather here is beautiful. Why would you go to southern Italy when it's 25 degrees here? Well, we found out for the next eight summers why people did that. It's funny.

Because the summer, you can get a middle of July day that'll be 18 degrees in London, but you'll also get a day in the middle of February that's 18 degrees. So choose your poison, I guess. So tell me, what did you do professionally? What did Paul Romanuk do when he was in England? I did a lot of freelancing. I did the Spangler Cup, which showed up. Oh, I watched. I always took note when I could. Hey, Paul Romanuk's calling this whatever it would be, Davos. What is it? Davos? Davos versus. And I always would tune into a Spangler Cup, particularly the final. But I would hear you there for sure.

Love doing that. So I did the Spengler. I worked for Eurosport, which is the biggest European sports channel. And I would do what hockey they had. They didn't have much of it, but I would do basketball. I would do baseball, softball, any sort of quote American type sports as they refer to them. And I did a lot of work for the International Ice Hockey Federation. I produced web content for them. I went and trained up as a Final Cut Pro editor, had a camera and would go around and as is the trend now, you're a one man band. So you go and you shoot and you write and you front and you edit. And I did that for a lot of years for them, which was a great experience. I did some work for a contract publisher. One of the really cool jobs I had was with this contract publisher, and they got the contract to

publish a magazine for the Asian Indoor Games, which were being held in Macau. So I commuted from London to Macau for about six months, going back and forth, editing this magazine. So I did a lot of different things, including some work for people over here. I did a couple of Olympics for CBC. So it wasn't like I disappeared. I think some people, and why would anybody follow my career?

I wouldn't expect them to. But I think some people, and why would anybody follow my career? I wouldn't expect them to. But I think some people had the impression that I kind of went over and retired for it and didn't do anything for it. I was still a working broadcaster, writer. I worked my ass off, but you didn't see much of the work over here. Right. Right. I got some questions here while I have you in Europe. So Mike G says,

for Romanuk, from his days covering IIHF tournaments, favorite European city? Now, excluding London, let's take London out of the mix. Because I always envy us when you're going off to these world championships.

It will be such awesome places like you get to go to on the company dime, so to speak. Like, what's your favorite city in Europe outside of London? Well, would that be from doing hockey there or just going there? Okay, let's do hockey first, and then you can tell me just going there. Well, for hockey, of the cities I've been to for hockey, I mean, man, Davos is pretty tough to beat.

Davos is a village, but it's an amazing place. But I suppose after that, Helsinki is a great hockey city. It's a nice place. It's not somewhere I'd, sorry, Finns, it's not somewhere I'd go out of my way to visit, but it's a great hockey city. Stockholm, as you would expect, Stockholm is a beautiful city. Um, it's a little bit smaller than Toronto, but it's, it's on an archipelago. So there are all kinds of islands and green space and fresh seafood. And it's, it's a, it's a beautiful place. So they'd, they'd be a couple that would be right up there. All right. Now, overall, just in your travels, uh, what's your favorite European city to visit? Tough to pick one, but it's hard to beat Paris. Um, you know, Paris is a, it is a, it is a gorgeous, gorgeous city. Um, you know, it was, it was spared, uh, heavy bombing in the second world war and is, is the better for it, but it, it is especially central Paris. Um, you know, like it's, it's, it like, it's a beautiful place.

I cannot recommend enough that people should go there and see it with their own eyes. It's a lovely city. No argument from me. I got engaged in Paris, actually. You picked a great city. Top of the Eiffel Tower, just to be super corny. Oh, my goodness. Aren't you the operator?

Well done. If I share that story, then the guys get mad at me. Like, oh, you know, I did it, like, during the first intermission of a Leeds game. Oh, yeah. But, yeah, well done. If I share that story, then the guys get mad at me. Like, oh, you know, I did it like during the first intermission of a Leeds game. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But yeah, no Paris. Amazing, amazing city. Matt wants, do you have any quick Spengler Cup stories you could share?

This is from Matt on Twitter. Yeah, the best one, Spengler Cup I did, I think I did 11 Spengler Cups. And enjoyed every one of them. Um, there are many, many stories, but the most interesting one is it it's, it's now at a stage where of course it's broadcast live and every single game is on. When we started, um, it wasn't that way. And as a matter of fact, the first year it was on Sportsnet and it was tape delayed by about a day and a half. And the way it worked was we would take the recording from the Swiss TV broadcast truck. They gave us a position.

Myself and Doug Honiger did the play-by-play and they would record this in the truck. We would physically take those tapes, give them to a courier. would physically take those tapes, give them to a courier. He would drive from Davos to Zurich, which is a couple hours drive, and get it on the first flight out in the morning, which would land in Toronto in mid-afternoon. They would get picked up at the airport, taken to a place that converted the format from PAL to NTSC, which is North American, trimmed it up, and then delivered it to Sportsnet, and it would run that night wow so it was it was a day and a half tape delayed well one of the days what happened was there was a huge snowstorm as happens in the swiss mountains so the tape for that game did not make it

in time so sports net ran the game they'd already run a second time and they got a bigger rating than they did and now of course it's all live oh yeah it's come a long long way but that's that's how it started off very humbly all right let's get you back to toronto shall we so in june 2014 you rejoined sports net as a play-by-play announcer for its national TV coverage. Now, just let me get this right. So, of course, you're doing Hockey Night in Canada, where we have Jim Hewson and Bob Cole and yourself. But you're also doing, and I'm not sure if this is at the beginning, you tell me, but at some point you replace Joe Bowen

for the regional Leafs games. You tell me, do I get this right? That's how I understand it. It had nothing to do with me. What happened, I think, is Sportsnet or Rogers came in and bought everything. Bought this great big massive bucket of hockey. And I was hired to come back and be one of the Hockey Night in Canada announcers. Keith Pelley is the guy responsible,

or depending on what side of the fence you're on, irresponsible. Is this the $12 billion deal? Yeah. 12 years, or I don't know how many billions, I can't remember. 12 years and a massive amount of money. X billion, yeah.

And so I was coming back, and as part of the deal, I was doing X number of Hockey Night in Canada national games, but they also had, they share, as people may or may not be aware, it's the only, I think it's, well, it is the only situation in the entire league where regional broadcast rights are shared. So normally, in every other city in the NHL, there is a broadcast entity, be it Fox, Northwest Sports, whatever, who have the local rights. Right. And they do all of the local games. Well, in Toronto, because the Leafs are owned in part by both Bell and Rogers, who, of course, also own sports channels, they share the regional rights. And I want to say the regional games are, there are, and I could have the number slightly wrong, but for sake of argument, there are, you know, 38 games that are national games. So games that are on hockey night in Canada,

Saturday nights, and that's the way it's always been in Canada. So there was, even back when it was CBC and TSN, CBC had the national rights and they got X number, the lion's share of Leaf games. And then the regional package is a completely different animal. So long story short, and it's very broadcasty, but Rodgers' half of the Leafs's regional games which had been done by joe tsn's half had been done by joe up until i think a few years in and i wasn't here but at some stage tsn obviously went well we don't want joe to do them we want gordon miller or chris cuthbert or

one of our guys so so that was that's what they did. So Joe on TV was doing the Rogers portion of the regional games. So when they brought me back, they wanted to put their own voice on there. Uh, I had zero to do with it and, and I get slaughtered still on, on social media as though I, and I had nothing to do with it. It was, I was, when I came back, it was, you're doing, you know, Saturday hockey night in Canada, and we want you to do the, our, our half of the Leaf regional games, which I love doing. I mean, it's, it's a dream job. It's fantastic. Who wouldn't like doing the Leafs? Um, but that's, that's how Joe got nudged out of doing the regional games.

Is this why you're not on Twitter? Is it because Crazy Leaf fans who just missed Joe Bowen are going to just slag you? You know what? And I think I'm ahead of the curve on this. Twitter, growth in Twitter is sort of stagnated, as has their stock price. And I think the reason is, you know, I have a, I have a lurker account on there because I use Twitter as an aggregate news

source. I use it to follow hockey reporters and you can get some useful information, but in terms of everything else, um, you know, I won't mince words. Like there's too many assholes, like whether, whether, whether you're discussing politics or sports or the Leafs or anything. And I'm, that's not Paul Romanek saying that, that is, that is them losing users who are saying that because it's, you know, they're, they're grasping at straws now saying, oh, 240 characters. Well, that's not going to help. Twitter's not going to get any better. People at Twitter who probably aren't listening, but it's not going to get any better until you start to moderate the discussion and keep it civil because there can be some great discussions on there. But the sad thing is you look at anything that expresses an opinion, and I guarantee

you if it's somebody who has a large enough number of followers, by the time you go down five deep into the comments, you've gotten an idiot, uh, who, who takes it, uh, someplace where it shouldn't go. So, uh, yeah, I just got tired of it. I just, I just, you know, why am I doing this? Uh, I, you know, and I, I think, you know think it's just why? I can't blame you. There's too many people who will say things to you via Twitter that they would never even consider saying if they met you

at the Kensington Market or whatever. They would never consider going up to you and saying something like, you suck. Do you know what I mean? But they will say it on Twitter. You call them a large number of uh anonymous assholes um on twitter and it's my humble opinion and it's the old story in life mike i mean it's it's a few a few bad apples who ruin it for everybody i was on twitter when i lived in the

uk as sort of you know uh sometime but but mostly former Canadian sports guy and big. I tweeted a lot about European hockey and sports because that's what my life was. No, I remember. I used to follow you on Twitter. I remember this. And I got up to about 6,000 or 7,000 followers. And I had some very civil interactions

with people at that level. It was, I can remember some of the users. I can remember their name, their handle names even now. And you'd discuss an aspect of international hockey or music or whatever. And then I just think the whole Twitter making even a political observation, and it just quickly degenerates to, you know, you're an idiot, you're this, libtard, you know, and it just, within a few comments. So to answer your question in a long, blathering answer, it's just, why would you bother with that? You don't need the aggravation. I always wonder if guys like Mike Wilner, so he's been on a few times on this program and you know, Willner takes a serious, he takes a lot of abuse on Twitter. Uh, and it's just some people just love to hate him. And I think a guy's like Steve Simmons, I mentioned him earlier,

but he's coming in to kick out the jam soon. And you should read some of the tweets that Simmons deals with. Like, I always wonder, like, like unless your contract says you need to have a social presence or a social media presence, like how is—Brunts said it best. He said he just took a hard pass at the whole thing. There's no Brunt on Twitter. Uh, like it's, it is, it's, it's, it's, it could be something really, really good, but in its present form, it's something that is more of an annoyance and really bad than anything. And I think that's why you're seeing a lot of like big celebrities don't even bother with it anymore. And that's, again, that's not my opinion. That's a fact.

Their growth in terms of users has stagnated at about 330 million facebook has over a billion they're on instagram now all those uh the cool people there i think where my where my daughter and son live there but uh question about your uh hockey night in canada uh play-by-play calling will you get to call a conference final this season like when will you know like How does that work? I know I'm going to guess. Houston's got it in his contract. He calls the finals.

This is my guess. That's just a listener. I feel like maybe Houston's got that in his contract. And Bob Cole usually gets, I don't know when he stops going, but a conference final. But how do you know if you get to call a conference final? Well, you're told. But I mean, I know now that I will call one of the conference finals. So is it you and Houston, like one each?

Yeah, yeah, that's what it'll be. I mean, you know, Jim is, I don't even know if it's in his contract. I mean, Jim's the best guy. He's the dean of hockey announcers. He's been in the big chair at HockeyNet in Canada for it's got to be a decade now anyways, at least, since Bob Cole did a final. Jim sort of inherited that mantle, and he will do the final as long as he's there, I would guess.

Yeah, that's pure speculation on my part for some reason because I was a longtime huge Bob Cole fan. Like just to me, he was a Vince Scully. Legend. Of hockey. And you know what? The thing is about Bob, he is when Bob finally hangs it up and none of us know when that's going to be, but it will be the end of an era because Bob is the last of the iconic play-by-play voices. There are no iconic play-by-play voices anymore.

And by that, it depends what your definition of iconic is. But mine is the guy who does every big game. And Bob comes from an era when the big game was Saturday nights. There was one big game a week, and it was Saturday night, and it was on CBC, and it was back when I was a kid. It was Bill Hewitt or Danny Gallivan or maybe Dick Irvin when he called some games, and then it was Bob Cole. And they would do the Stanley Cup final.

They were the guys. And now every single hockey game is on. Like every single game is a national game. If you have the NHL center ice package, you can watch every game every night, hear every team's announcers. So there are – and so, I mean, Jim is our guy, and he does Saturday nights at 7 o'clock, which is the big game, and Jim will call the final as he should because he's the guy.

But Saturday night isn't Saturday night anymore. It's been diluted, essentially. Yeah, well put. Saturday used to be Saturday, back in the era of Danny Gallivan and Dick Irvin and Dave Hodge and so on, because that was the only national game that was on TV right across Canada was Saturday nights. Now, every night is a national game. And so it's greatly diluted. And that's why Bob is the last connection to sort of that era. So just like Leaf fans should not blame Paul Romanuk for the fact that they don't see Joe Bowen doing the regional

Leaf games. You can't blame Paul for that, but you also can't, I cannot blame you for the fact that Bob Cole might not be calling a conference final this season. That is not your decision. No. And all the hate and anger we have because we don't like change,

stick it up your arse and evolve here. Clark scored the hat trick in game six of the 93 Campbell Conference final. You know, that was Bob Cole and Harry Neal were the voices who were bringing me that game. And I just, it's nostalgia, man. Well, they were the, you know, I mean, they were the guys, right? Again, I'm repeating myself, but those guys don't exist anymore, right? I mean, there were the TSN guys and there were the Sportsnet guys and there are the the the guys who are on Saturday and CBC. But it's just it's a completely different world now than than even back 10, 15 years ago. And that's why I think Bob will be the end of an era.

Whenever that era comes, he will be the last of the great iconic hockey play-play voices, I think. I mentioned Mike Hogan had a question. Yeah, he wants me to ask you a question. You mopped the floor with Barry Davis in Beatles Jeopardy? Yes, I did. I am a Beatles nerd. So I jokingly on Twitter, maybe your lurker account picked this up. I don't know.

But I said that like I was thinking my buddy Mike Stafford, who's on 640, is a huge trivia guy and a huge music guy. And he's pretty damn good at Beatles trivia. And I said, I would like sell tickets for Romy versus Stafford and Beatles trivia. And then Jeremy Taggart, drummer from Our Lady Peace. Oh yeah. He chimed in to say he wants to take on the winner.

He thinks he could make a run at this. And I was thinking, we have an idea here. Beatles trivia amongst medium people, but that's cool. So you are uh do you want to like do you have any really quick fun facts about the fab four that you could uh share on our way out uh maybe any little factoids that the commenters like myself don't know or is that putting you on the spot i mean there are so many many, which would just be general knowledge. I'm trying. Oh, well, here's this song, Revolution.

There actually was a slow version done, of course, which is on the White Album. And John Lennon so wanted it to be a single, but it was too slow, the one in the White Album. So they recorded this fast version, which is a much more rocky version. You can hear the sort of fuzz box on George Harrison's guitar. Yes. And it still didn't make it as an A-side, because they had done their magnum opus at the time, which was Hey Jude. So this ended up on the B-side of Hey Jude, and according to any Beatles-related stuff

that I've read, John Lennon was always disappointed that it was never an A-side because he thought it was a great single, and you know what? You'd have to call it a double A-sided single, wouldn't you? Yeah, this song has that grungy feel where it reminds me of like a Cinnamon Girl, kind of a Neil Young kind of, they always say he's godfather of grunge or whatever, but I feel like this might be, I don't know. Can I say this is the first grunge song? Yeah, the Distorting. And another factoid was the film they made for this was shot in studio, I want to say it was in Twickenham.

The director was a guy named Michael Lindsay Hogue, hyphenated British last name, who also was the director of the ill-fated Let It Be movie a few years later. You got to come back and kick out the jams. But you're not allowed to pick 10 Beatles songs. You're going to have to diversify that portfolio a little bit. I can do that. Oh, that's awesome. And poor Barry Davis didn't know what he was in for. Barry Davis, by the way, would kick your butt in Tom Petty trivia.

Barry Davis is now a lead singer in a Tom Petty cover band. I didn't know that. That's good for Barry. So you can dominate the Beatles trivia, but don't go at him with any Tom Petty trivia. And he's a million miles ahead of me because he can actually play. So good on Barry. Thanks for doing this, man. I hope you had a good time.

My pleasure. Thank you. Long overdue. My pleasure. Thank you very much. I greatly appreciate it. And you're going to have to come west again at some point to kick out the jams with me. I'll get the sat-nav fired up.

The good news is you'll get more Great Lakes beer. It's worthwhile. It's all good. It's a win-win. It's a win-win. And that brings us to the end of our 281st show.

You can follow me on Twitter at Toronto Mike. You can't follow Paul on Twitter because he's not going to tell you what his lurker account is.

That's his secret. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer and Property in the 6th is at Brian Gerstein and PayTM is at PayTM Canada.

See you all next week. And drink some goodness from a tin Cause my UI check has just come in Ah, where you been? Because everything is kind of rosy and green