TIEMAN WAS A SHINING STAR ON AND OFF THE ICE

Randy Tieman is the nicest man I ever met. I’m sure a lot of people who knew Randy would say the same thing. So it was heartbreaking to learn while I was in Vancouver on the weekend covering the Canadiens that the jolly former Montreal sportscaster who was called “T” by all his friends had died suddenly at his Ontario home at age 64. Randy would call almost everyone “bud” and if you talked to him for five minutes he became your bud. The world needs more people like “T” and now there is one less. He was like a real-life Santa Claus. His wife, Liane, called him a “teddy bear,” which is an even better description. If you asked Randy how he was doing, the answer would be either “fantastic!” or “perfect!” He was like a man who never had a bad day — only he had many because of health issues. In the mid 1990s, within an 18-month span, Randy was hit with Stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma, meningitis that put him in a coma and a quintuple bypass. He survived it all and never lost the big smile behind that bushy moustache or the best laugh you ever heard. He just enjoyed life even more and lived for the moment and the family he loved so much — Liane and their four children: Gabrielle, Jesse, Dennis and Harry. Living in the moment and enjoying every one of them is the biggest lesson Randy taught me and I will be forever indebted to him for that. I first met Randy in the early 1980s after he left CJOH TV in Ottawa and joined CFCF (later CTV) in Montreal. Ron Francis, who also worked at CFCF, organized a weekly Thursday morning pickup hockey game in Pointe-Claire for media people and others who worked at night. After joining the group, Randy decided it would be fun to put a team in the Can/Am Challenge Cup in Lake Placid, N.Y., and we went for the first time in 1985 and continued to go for 10 straight years — winning the tournament more than once in large part thanks to T. What started out as a CFCF No-Stars team grew into a band of brothers who became lifelong friends with an unbreakable bond. Our wives and girlfriends became friends and so did our children. When Randy would meet one of the guys’ new girlfriends or wives for the first time, he would always tell them the same thing: “You know what I like about you? Everything!” Then he would laugh and give them a hug. Randy’s love affair with Liane started on a bus trip with the No-Stars to play an annual charity game in Huntingdon. Liane, who was a secretary at CFCF at the time, decided to go on the bus trip with one of her friends and other co-workers to watch the game and enjoy the party. On the ride home, it was obvious there was something special about this new relationship between two fantastic people and the guys had the bus driver pull over to the side of the road. Everybody got out and the bus driver — acting like the captain of a ship — performed a fake wedding ceremony for Randy and Liane. The real wedding was to come later and they were happily married for more than 30 years before Randy’s death. Randy was also the most optimistic person I ever met, which probably helps explain how he survived his earlier health scares. When he resumed playing hockey after his heart operation, Randy had to wear two different-size skates because one foot remained swollen. Yet he never lost his old-fashioned sweep check as a defenceman. One year at Lake Placid, the No-Stars lost 9-2 to a team in the round-robin portion of the tournament with their star player scoring five goals. The way things worked, we were to face the same team in the final. In a bar the night before the final, T told us: “I think we can beat those guys. One guy did it all. We just need to stop him.” Randy drew up a game plan to shut the star player down and we won the final 3-2. You should have seen the smile on Randy’s face after the game. T was a father figure for the No-Stars and we loved him. Nobody wanted to let him down. We were young and sometimes wild back then, but if we started to get a bit out of control in a Lake Placid bar, Randy would just say: “Guys, take it easy!” and things would immediately calm down. We couldn’t disappoint T. But he also loved to have a good time and I’ll never forget the night we picked Randy up and put his feet on the ceiling of a Lake Placid bar while Lionel Richie’s hit song Dancing on the Ceiling was playing. You should have heard Randy laugh. We were called the No-Stars, but Randy will always be our shining star. RIP, T.