FAMED HOST SPREADS ‘SPIRIT OF THE GAME’
MacLean brings tales of hockey communities, big and small, to Ottawa
“It just so epitomizes the way we are. The game grew with the country, obviously; as the railroad moved across Canada, so did hockey, so the roots are deep. … It’s something that we can latch onto as having been ours from the start . ... So there’s that. Then the qualities of the game: the fact that we huddle against the cold, the fact that it makes us winter warriors, which is kind of representative of where we choose to live. Pierre Berton used to always say that your topography and the pull of your past are what shape you. … And I love the spirit of the game. … I think of (Steve) Yzerman not only as a great hockey player, but I remember when he won the cup in ’98, handing the Stanley Cup to Vladimir Konstantinov in a wheelchair. And that is just so hockey, right? To care for one another, to step up. Canadians are caring and hockey is a game that really has always kind of been built around the idea of taking care of one another. “So that’s probably the best thing that I can come up with.”
Ask Canada’s perhaps bestknown hockey broadcaster about what binds Canadians to their game and you get an answer that says as much about the man as the sport.
For the lion’s share of the past 33 years, Ron MacLean has been the face of Hockey Night in Canada — straight man to the gruff and grumbling Don Cherry, trivia-toting narrator to the pastime of a nation, a history lover and a storyteller.
For the past four years, MacLean has also criss-crossed the nation as co-host (with colleague Tara Slone) of Rogers Hometown Hockey, a show that tells the tales of hockey communities big and small.
This weekend, MacLean et al bring Hometown Hockey to Ottawa for a two-day event hosted by Algonquin College, culminating with a TV broadcast on Sunday.
The show will spotlight Steve Yzerman and Darren Pang talking about their childhood years in Nepean. It will also look at recovery efforts in the wake of September’s devastating tornadoes, including the experience of five-time Paralympian and Own the Podium chair Todd Nicholson. Nicholson and his brother, Jason, both lost their homes in the twisters.
MacLean describes the Nicholson story as “just a real tear-jerker and a dandy,” and he says he has a suspicion his famed Coach’s Corner mate will enjoy it, too.
Why? Well, after Todd Nicholson and his wife Emily lost their home, they managed to recover the pet goldfish, subsequently renamed “Happy- Go-Lucky.”
“Don Cherry loves goldfish,” MacLean says. “When he meditates, it’s either in his Lincoln Mark VI sitting out in the driveway in the rain or it’s in his basement, staring at his goldfish. He’s gonna love that story.”
MacLean comes across as a bit of a study in contrasts in conversation: the affable, left-leaning, considered counterpart to the
Hockey is a game that really has always kind of been built around the idea of taking care of one another.
bombastic star of Coach’s Corner, but still the hockey purist, steeped in the history, stories and stats of the game, who doesn’t apologize for his fondness for a good, oldfashioned tilt for matters of pride and principle.
“Last night, in the Calgary Flames game, Sam Bennett dropped the gloves to protect one of his teammates who’d been hit hard, Mark Jankowski, and that is a hard sort of vigilante justice to defend, but I like it. I just feel like Canadians are best when we’re defending or protecting others, and we’ve proved that during world wars and I feel like the game is somehow tapped into that.”
After years of working shoulder to padded shoulder with Cherry, MacLean says the two have become fast friends and mentions Cherry’s kinder side, which MacLean says sometimes escapes the camera lights. He also, surprisingly, describes Cherry as the more “calculating” of the two.
“I do tend to speak from the heart and from the hip, maybe a little too much for my own good. Don, I think, is way more calculating.
Hold on, wait ... Really?
“He sits and thinks. He was burned in his young career,” MacLean says.
For, as polished a storyteller as MacLean is, he’s been singed a few times himself by saying the wrong thing the wrong way at the wrong moment.
Years ago, after former hockey coach and sex predator Graham James pleaded guilty to charges, MacLean says, he made an on-air comment to Cherry that, by admitting guilt, James had spared his victims the pain of a trial.
The reaction to a comment seen by some as lauding a pedophile, even in the pre-Twitter age, was quick and furious.
“I remember feeling my wife’s fear. There was a lot of hate mail and a lot of hate directed toward us, and to put Cari through that was a really difficult week.
“The hardest hit were victims … someone who had gone down that road and been abused. I could just sense what I had done inadvertently to hurt them.
“That was a lesson. You’re constantly learning.”
But MacLean, born to Cape Breton parents on a German military base, doesn’t back away from his intentions, even in what he says might have been his worst on-air mistake.
“I do think that, in the end, those are the most important things that
I would ever do in my career is to speak on behalf of mercy and tolerance and understanding.”
More recently, during the 2016 Rio Olympics, MacLean faced accusations of sexism after he asked multiple medallist swimmer Penny Oleksiak about her hockeyplaying brother.
“My first thought was, ‘Well, good grief. It’s just her brother and her role model.’ But I also understood, ‘Ron, OK, have your antenna up, you know, try to be aware of what people are sensitive to at this time.’”
Navigating the changing levels of awareness is part of staying relevant to the conversation for a media personality, something critics have long suggested that Cherry may no longer be. MacLean doesn’t see it that way. “It’s important to hold on to dissenting opinion, and Don represents that. It’s more prevalent now through social media. Don used to be the one lumberjack amongst a country of woodpeckers. Now everybody’s got a chance with social media to chime in,” MacLean says. “So he maybe isn’t unique in terms of having a contrarian opinion, but I still think he’s very schooled, he’s well read, he’s experienced and seasoned and cares. I do, too.”
MacLean says he can see himself hosting Hockey Night in Canada and Hometown Hockey for “at least 10 years … Lord willing,” but opens the door to a change of plans regarding Hockey Night should Cherry ever decide to call it a day.
“If Don ever decides, and I don’t know if he ever will, but, if Don ever decided to retire, that would be a point at which I think Hockey Night could evolve,” adding he’d still like to contribute.
A sports broadcaster, inevitably, becomes a “companion” for their audience, he says.
“I always likened it to one of those jobs where everybody knows your name. There is a familiarity for sure, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a celebrity familiarity. I think it’s more just a comfort level. … It’s someone with whom you’re going to spend your time.”