Hall of Fame notebook: NHL coverage too tame for Roenick’s taste

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Jeremy Roenick knows he’s made headlines for the wrong reasons a few times during his post-playing media career.

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But the newly minted Hall of Famer believes it’s vital that hockey commentary continue to push the envelope to win new fans and keep older ones engaged.

“In the NBA, a lot of people won’t watch a game, but will watch intermission to see Charles Barkley and Shaq go at it,” Roenick said Friday at the Hall ring ceremony. “I think hockey for the most part, Biz (Paul Bissonette) being one of the exceptions, is very quiet and a little melodramatic.

“I’m never going to be one of those people, I’ll always be energetic, entertaining. Not right all the time, but at least telling what I feel and making it fun to watch.”

Hockey’s speed and physical contact rarely translates to the same emotion among commentators.

“It’s just been the mentality around the NHL for a long time,” Roenick said. “You’re one of 20 (players). Don’t expose yourself, don’t be different, no smiling, everybody get to work, put your skates away, come back tomorrow, do it again.

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“If I watch a post-period interview with a player, I’ll fall asleep. They give you nothing you haven’t seen without emotion. All sports is entertainment. Give people something to talk about, get angry about.”

RULES CAN GET UNRULY

The goal as Colin Campbell says, is to keep trying to make the game perfect. The reality is that the NHL’s own people are often the biggest obstacle. It’s the nature of the beast, says the league’s senior executive vice-president for hockey operations, officiating and Central Scouting.

It began with Campbell and wide range of players and execs re-writing the rules for the ‘new NHL’ in 2005 after that season’s lockout and continues to this day when the book gets tweaked.

“You always make your job harder when you put in new rules,” said Campbell, who enters the Hall’s builders wing this weekend. “But there are so many challenges to everything you introduce to try and make it perfect, the coach’s challenge, offsides, goalie interference, hooking, interference.

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“There is so much pressure on coaches to win now — 15 of 32 of them were fired last year — and I don’t blame them. I was an NHL coach once and they all want to win. But our job is to make it fun for the players and entertaining for the fans. It’s much, much better now.”

PLEASE PICK UP

Unfortunately, this era of the robocall has made it harder on the Hall of Fame selection committee to inform its inductees of the good news.

That was the case in June as Mike Gartner and Lanny McDonald tried to track down Roenick, Campbell, Shea Weber, Pavel Datsyuk, David Poile, Natalie Darwitz and Krissy Wendell-Pohl.

“I was onstage at a Minnesota Wild leadership conference with boys and girls high school captains and my phone wouldn’t stop going off,” Darwitz said “I wondered: ‘What’s the emergency’? I just peeked at it and saw a Toronto number. I thought, well, it’s spam, no big deal.”

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At first, Roenick figured it was another recorded request for campaign donations from one of the U.S. presidential candidates. He eventually called the number back and got the Hall’s pre-recorded ticket purchase line, but at least had an inkling what was up. When Gartner and McDonald reached him, he was in a long Starbucks drive-through line and by the time the barista handed him his order he was bawling with joy, leaving the restaurant’s staff wondering if he was in distress.

Weber was on a golf course in B.C., about to putt and was bothered when his phone kept going off. Also thinking it was 416 spam, he rejected two or three calls, before Kelly Masse from the Hall got a hold of him by text.

ELEPHANT’S MEMORY

For Leafs coach Craig Berube, Friday’s Hall of Fame Game was like the old TV show This Is Your Life.

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He had a connection to almost all the inductees, from working under builder Poile as a Washington Capital, to many encounters on the ice with Roenick and off of it with Campbell.

“I was close with David, he was really good to me,” Berube said. “I look forward to talking to Collie all the time and seeing what’s going on. I golf with Jeremy. I’m happy for all of them.’

But a funny story about a lingering feud between him and Roenick came up.

“(Roenick) sucker-punched me once in a skirmish when the refs had me (tied up),” Berube recalled. “I’d never got the opportunity to really get him back.”

Until five years later, when Berube was with the Philadelphia Phantoms of the AHL and Roenick the parent Flyers. The first time the clubs practised at the same facility, Berube came right into the Flyers room looking for Roenick. The latter admitted he’d started the whole thing by running goalie Ron Hextall and thought Berube had beaten him up enough in the ensuing fight before getting his one shot in while he was wrapped up. But Roenick figured any thought of retribution was water under the bridge.

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“Chief put his (friendly) arm around me and said: ‘What’s up J.R.?. Then he gave me a quick shot to the mouth (dropping Roenick to his knees) and says: ‘Told you, I’d get ya back.”

POWER OF THE PEN

Also going into the Hall in Monday’s induction in the media wing are Elmer Ferguson Award winner Scott Burnside. It was full circle for Burnside to have the Wings and Leafs in the Hall game as he worked at the Windsor Star and National Post covering the respective teams after originally working in the Toronto Sun’s news department.
Toronto-born Eric Duhatschek, a past Ferguson winner, announced his retirement Friday. His 46-year career began in his hometown as a Sun freelancer and expanded to the Calgary Sun, Calgary Herald, Globe and Mail, The Athletic and a stint on Hockey Night in Canada’s Satellite Hot Stove.

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