Anchorboy (9 page)

S
EPTEMBER 11, 2001.

It started off as a regular morning on
The Big Breakfast
. We had gone to commercial break in between segments, and I noticed that a group of guests who were on the show that morning were gathering around our TV monitors in the lobby. I paid little attention to this because I had another segment to prepare for and only two minutes of commercial break time in which to do it. Suddenly Chris Albi, my trusted floor director on the show, was frantically waving her arms around in the lobby instead of prepping guests for the next segment. It wasn’t a big deal because it was a cooking segment, and Chris was the kind of woman who flapped her arms constantly as she talked anyway. By then we could basically prepare for those cooking segments in our sleep. I chatted casually with the chef who was on the show that day, trying to ignore the commotion that was taking place. Suddenly with about ten seconds to go before we were back from commercial, Chris sprinted toward me and screamed, “SOMEBODY FLEW INTO
THE WORLD TRADE CENTER!” and then, with her fingers, she counted down … 3 … 2 … 1 … cue.

Needless to say I was a little taken aback. Somebody
flew
into the World Trade Center? One person? What? How could that happen? In my mind I imagined a single-engine plane piloted by some Wall Street guy who hadn’t taken enough flying lessons. Had he smacked up against the exterior of one of the towers and caused a massive fire? These were the questions flying through my head as I tried to ask intelligent questions of the hard-working chef who had graciously agreed to appear on our show that morning with zero sleep. By the time the next commercial break rolled around, we had already gone off the air and started broadcasting CNN on our channel. I had been replaced by the dulcet tones of Aaron Brown.

About two weeks later I received a call from one of TSN’s senior hockey producers, Rick Briggs-Jude. It was completely out of the blue. I hadn’t thought much about TSN for the previous year. I was fully entrenched in the world of
The Big Breakfast
.

“How’d you like to move back to Toronto and be the first host of the NHL Network?” Rick asked.

I wasn’t exactly sure what he was talking about. NHL Network? As it turned out, the league was preparing to launch its own channel and had enlisted TSN’s help. The NHL would control content but the entire production crew and studios would come out of the CTV Agincourt building in Scarborough, Ontario. Plans were to do a nightly show called
NHL on the Fly
, in which the viewer would be able to see us take live “look-ins” at games for two minutes at a time. Going from game to game to game, viewers would presumably get a more complete take on what was happening in the league that night than they would by watching one game in its entirety. It was sort of the same concept as the NFL’s RedZone Channel. I was intrigued but it didn’t exactly sound like my dream job, and frankly it also sounded like
a lot
of work. Six hours of live television a night? I was
exhausted just thinking about it, and by now I think it’s pretty clear I didn’t get into this business to work hard. I was also unsure of what this meant for my relationship with Darcy. I thought about it carefully, discussed it with Darcy, and others, and after plenty more careful consideration and deliberation I called Rick, thanked him for the offer, and turned it down.

For the first time in my career, I was turning down an opportunity, and a pretty good opportunity at that. This job was something that a lot of young broadcasters in my position would have killed for. But at the time, turning it down felt like the right thing to do.

Then Rick called back and offered more money.

It’s a funny thing, negotiating broadcasting salaries in this country. There really isn’t much of an agent system here in the world of television broadcasting unless you are
very
high up on the food chain (think Ron MacLean, Don Cherry, Frank D’Angelo). The very simple reason is that the money is not quite good enough to justify someone else taking 10 percent to negotiate for it. In fact, there is a general secrecy about what everyone is making in broadcasting unless you’re working for the CBC. I had no idea what to ask for in terms of salary from the NHL Network. But when Mike Toth said “80 (thousand) would be pretty good” to start, I knew he was speaking from experience. Later I came to realize that at the time a high five-figure salary was a pretty standard starting point for sports anchors on a national level in Canada back then. It goes without saying that the Canadian broadcasting pay scale is likely a little lower than it should be simply because jobs are scarce and so many people want them. Nonetheless, I was making less than $60,000 to host a three-hour breakfast show in Winnipeg at the time, so when Rick called back and offered $78,000 for the first year, then $83,000 for the second, it felt like a bit of a windfall.

Even more than the money was the fact that I hadn’t worked in sports television for two years and hadn’t even been following
sports as closely as I should have. Concentrating only on hockey in my transition back to sports television was a very appealing proposition because hockey was the one sport I would
never
stop following closely. One other item about the offer probably sealed the deal: Rick pointed out that after six hours of
NHL on the Fly
every night I would finish my workday by hosting a half-hour wrap-up show called
That’s Hockey 2
. This wasn’t the first incarnation of
That’s Hockey 2
. While I was gone on my prairie sojourn, TSN had tried their own half-hour all-hockey highlight show after
Sportsdesk
that was also called
That’s Hockey 2
. The show was hosted by Darren Dutchyshen and Pierre McGuire, and it was one of the very first assignments Pierre had at the network. I loved the show and the chemistry between Darren and Pierre and was shocked when TSN decided to end it after only one year on the air, though I understand that after seeing Pierre’s larger-than-life personality on the show, TSN execs likely thought he needed an even bigger platform for his talents.

Nonetheless, I loved the concept of an all-hockey highlight show on TSN. I thought the network had a perfect opportunity to create another tent-pole franchise almost as important as
Sportsdesk
, just as
Baseball Tonight
was such a huge part of ESPN’s lineup during the summer. But what was
really
appealing about the idea of hosting
That’s Hockey 2
was the fact that it would be simulcast on TSN every night at midnight eastern. Therefore I would be on Canada’s number one sports network, nationally, four nights a week at 9:00 p.m. in Vancouver, 10:00 p.m. in Calgary, 11:00 p.m. in Winnipeg, and so on. I would basically have achieved my goal of being on TSN every night.

After a tear-filled discussion with Darcy she ultimately blurted out, “I think you should go.” She knew our relationship wouldn’t survive my turning down this kind of opportunity. I would likely regret it and harbour resentment toward her for making me stay
in Winnipeg, working for her, becoming a bit of a neutered lap-dog. I called Rick back and asked for one more condition: I wanted the network to fly me back to Winnipeg once a month so I could visit Darcy and, yes, continue my relationship with her. When they agreed to my terms, I decided to accept the offer. In just three years, I had gained all the on-air experience I was going to gain by working on the prairies. Now it was time to return to the so-called centre of the Canadian media universe.

I had stupidly forgotten to ask TSN to put me up in a hotel for a few months while I found a place to live, but I had already contacted my friend Rob McDerment, a former writer with me at
Sportsdesk
who was now producing
The Reporters
with Dave Hodge. Rob graciously agreed to let me stay in an extra room in his great little house at Mount Pleasant and Davisville in midtown Toronto for about $300 a month. Rob is married now to a lovely girl named Hannah, and they had just started dating at the time. Hannah loves to tell me her very first memory of me was seeing that room, with an air mattress squeezed into it and an old floor lamp where I hung my suits, and most importantly, two large bags of Tostitos sitting on that air mattress because I had no other place to store them and they were the only food I had in the house. Welcome to the glamorous world of Canadian broadcasting.

J
UST AS WITH
The Big Breakfast
, I was clearly a last-minute desperation hire by TSN for
NHL on the Fly
. TSN was essentially running the NHL Network, and they had stepped in and reassigned many young writers and producers to work on the new show with just two weeks to spare. I was the only host hired at the beginning of the network’s run, but because I was working such long on-air hours, the plan was for me to work four days on, four days off. I didn’t bother to ask them if they had a plan in place for someone else to host on the days I wasn’t working, because I was too busy getting ready to host the show myself. I worked with several analysts in the beginning, including former
Hockey News
editor-in-chief Steve Dryden, who had just started full-time work at TSN; former NHL forward Dave Reid, who had just retired that summer after winning a Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche; Canadian women’s hockey star Cassie Campbell; and perhaps most intimidating, former NHL head coach Iron Mike Keenan, who was once again in between jobs and had made his way back to broadcasting.

If you’ve followed hockey at all over the past twenty years you know that Mike Keenan has a pretty tough reputation. There are plenty of players, Brett Hull being the most obvious example, who couldn’t stand playing for him. He was supposedly mean, tough, and abrasive. As usual when reputations precede people in this business, things aren’t always as they seem, and off camera I found Mike to be a friendly and warm guy with a wicked sense of humour. We had a great clip of the “truck feed” from one of the games in the 2000 Stanley Cup Final. The “truck feed” is the clean version of the broadcast, directly from the broadcast truck parked outside the arena, without commercials. The talent is often still mic’d up during commercial breaks, and those of us who have access to the truck feed can hear everything they say.

The clip in question featured CBC play-by-play broadcasters Bob Cole and Harry Neale waiting for someone to bring them first-period statistics of the game they were calling so they could refer to them on the broadcast. Apparently, whoever was supposed to bring the stats to Bob and Harry had gotten lost, and Harry was not happy about it. Finally out of the blue the “runner” arrives at Bob and Harry’s broadcast location, and Harry says, “Finally! The whole game we’ve been waiting! You fucking blockhead!”

I swear to God, over the course of the first four months of the NHL Network’s existence, we played that clip on the studio monitors a hundred times, and each and every time Mike Keenan let out a big belly laugh when he heard Harry say “fucking blockhead.” We even put it on a loop for him. “Fucking blockhead. Fucking blockhead. Fucking blockhead.” He just loved watching Harry lose it over not having his stats sheet; he would cackle loudly each time.

There was also, as you might expect, a softer side to Mike. Like most guys who seem to have a tough exterior, their true nature comes out when their family needs them. At the same time I was hosting
The Big Breakfast
when the planes hit the World Trade
Center, Mike was frantically trying to get in touch with his daughter, who was attending Columbia University in Manhattan at the time. As for many people that day, trying to get in touch with family and friends living in New York City proved to be difficult, and after unsuccessfully trying to contact his daughter for a period of time, Mike made the decision to hop in his car and drive several hours from his cottage outside of Toronto to New York City to make sure his daughter was okay. He got as far as Niagara Falls when his daughter finally got through to him on his cell phone and assured him she was all right. I wondered what it must have been like for a father to feel that terrible sense of uncertainty behind the wheel.

As usual, I was a bundle of nerves behind the scenes, making my return to sports broadcasting on a national stage. I was nervous about my on-air performance and constantly worried that I hadn’t been following hockey closely enough for this job. Looking back, I realize I was being completely irrational, but at the time I was wound up pretty tightly. One night during rehearsals for
NHL on the Fly
, I messed up a set of highlights by wrongly identifying one of the players on the scoring play. These days, I would just include such a mistake in our popular “Ya Blew It!” segment at the end of
SportsCentre
, but back then when I made a mistake like that I felt the eyes of our entire crew on me, even though our entire crew likely couldn’t have cared less. I didn’t yell or scream or anything, but I was clearly dejected during the commercial break, seething in angry silence. Without hesitation, Mike glanced ever so slightly over toward me and said, “Park it.”

Park it. That’s all he said. Suddenly I sat up straight, blood flow resumed normally, and I was ready to continue. Thanks, Coach. I guess he really did know how to motivate people.

NHL on the Fly
premiered in the first week of the NHL season in the fall of 2001. After hosting five shows in which I was on television for six hours per show, I was in need of a physical and mental break. One small problem: No one had bothered to hire another host for the show. The NHL Network was doing a six-hour show on Friday night and there was no one to host it. At the time there was no TSN2, so we had even fewer on-air personalities at the network. I was asked to host one extra show to kick things off, but I had already booked a flight back to Winnipeg to visit Darcy, whom I hadn’t seen in weeks. Dave Randorf was supposed to be the backup host, but he was already committed to hosting something else. I paid it no attention as it was out of my hands anyway. I flew back to Winnipeg, and Darcy and I enjoyed a night out on the town.

Once we returned home I flipped on the NHL Network to see which poor soul had been sucked in to filling in that night. To my horror, staring back at me behind the studio desk, was Dave Hodge. Yes,
the
Dave Hodge, the guy who once hosted
Hockey Night in Canada
and was now working for TSN as host of
The Reporters
as well as hosting a segment on the
NHL on TSN
. Calling Dave would have been their absolute last resort, so they clearly must have been desperate. I mean no offense to anyone working with me on that NHL Network venture, but it was clearly
beneath
Dave to have to fill in like this on a Friday night. But there he was, looking none too pleased about the matter, hosting a show for
six hours
. When he got the call at home, he apparently had a salmon in the oven and had just cracked open a bottle of white wine. I can’t even imagine what that phone call must have been like.

Later, when I returned, Dave Reid, who had just started in broadcasting and was still learning the ropes, told me that Dave
Hodge was obviously upset and not thrilled about being there. Reid said he was even more nervous than usual having to work with a guy he grew up watching on
Hockey Night in Canada
. Oh, and by the way, Dave Reid had just finished playing in the Stanley Cup Final!

After about a month of Dave Randorf filling in here and there, and several auditions for other hosts that didn’t work out, we finally hired a veteran auto racing reporter named Todd Lewis to be the other host of the show. Todd was an affable guy who just seemed happy to have the work, and I was thrilled that I could continue to make my somewhat ridiculous trek back to Winnipeg to see Darcy. TSN was still paying for my flights home as part of my contract, but it was becoming exhausting working four six-hour on-air shifts, then trekking out to the Hamilton airport (where WestJet flew out of at that time), flying to the ’Peg, and then returning home a day later. It was, not surprisingly, starting to take a toll on our relationship. I could see the signs that things were beginning to fray, but I was determined to make it work and even asked Darcy to marry me when she and I visited her parents for Christmas 2001. As it turned out, that wasn’t really the beginning of our life together—it was the beginning of the end.