True Patriot Love - June 29, 2026


[Sneak Peek] The Death of Hockey Night In Canada ft Steve Lansky


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

174.16

Word count

1,771

Sentence count

94

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Steve Lansky is one of the most experienced and accomplished producers in the history of Canadian sports television. At the start of his stellar career in the early 1980s, Steve was the youngest producer in the History of Hockey Night in Canada.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.000 Steve Lansky is one of the most experienced and accomplished producers in the history of Canadian
00:00:08.840 sports television. You can follow him at Big Mouth Sports and get more insight from a man who at the
00:00:15.220 start of his stellar career was the youngest producer in the history of Hockey Night in Canada
00:00:19.520 and he joins us at ANTPL Media. Steve, how are you my friend? I'm great Jim, how are you? Good,
00:00:25.240 it's a thrill to have you on. I'm a huge fan of your social media content and your insight
00:00:29.980 to what life was really like in Hockey Night in Canada,
00:00:33.680 especially after the last few weeks with the shocking announcement
00:00:36.500 that no longer Saturday Night Hockey in Canada,
00:00:40.400 it is a bit of a stunner.
00:00:42.400 For someone who produced Hockey Night in Canada in the early, mid, late 80s,
00:00:47.380 explain to the listeners, what was it like in Hockey Night in Canada at that time?
00:00:51.700 I call it the golden age of Hockey Night in Canada
00:00:54.420 because I started as a statistician.
00:00:57.260 I was a stats guy for four years, 79 to 83.
00:00:59.980 and then I was a producer from 83 to 88 and to me that was the absolute heyday of hockey night
00:01:05.980 we I wouldn't say we own the network but we felt like we owned the network which
00:01:11.540 maybe those are two different things but they weren't to us and news cbc news and uh you know
00:01:19.420 the national and us were butting head to head every single time we did a show because we all
00:01:24.920 wanted to own and run the network and the cachet that came with that and we wore the baby blue
00:01:31.440 blazers I look back and I think I can't believe I was lucky enough to do that for a decade on
00:01:39.080 various levels it almost blows my mind and Steve you know as someone of my vintage you Don Whitman
00:01:46.860 Don Cherry, Dave Hodge, Bob Cole, Harry Neal, Jim Robson, Danny Gallivan, the names are on the
00:01:55.500 pantheon of the greatest this country's ever produced. You're naming names. And all I can do
00:02:02.640 is think of stories. And you said Harry Neal. Oh, my God, Harry Neal, the funniest man I have ever
00:02:09.980 met in my life, in my entire life. The funniest man. We're at the Minnesota airport one time
00:02:17.200 and Harry and I drive up and we're flying back to Toronto, I think. And so we pull up
00:02:22.100 and then a guy from the NHL that I won't name pulls up behind us. And he's an older guy. He's
00:02:28.880 probably, you know, 65 years old, something like that. So we get out of the cab and we're getting
00:02:34.320 our bags out and he gets out of the cab and this lady is driving the cab and she's not 65 she's
00:02:41.840 about 25 and pretty good looking and harry just looks at him and says hey what cab company is that
00:02:53.200 harry like it just it just it came out it never stopped it just came out with harry
00:02:59.440 and that was every day with all of these guys it was crazy you know and you had a front row seat
00:03:07.040 to the creation of ron and don steve and for me as a viewer as someone going going through school
00:03:13.600 getting into my broadcast career i felt don cherry became a tv star during the 1987 stanley cup
00:03:19.680 playoffs when did you realize that you had something special in don cherry and he would
00:03:25.120 become the icon that he did well he started i'm not if i'm not mistaken he got fired by
00:03:33.440 colorado and ralph mellenby who i cannot say enough about his creativity and his ability
00:03:40.800 to have built hockey night in canada into what it was ralph was like nobody i've ever seen
00:03:46.000 had an ego like nobody i've ever seen and he needed it because that's what he used so he
00:03:51.280 brought Don Cherry in in about 1980 and I did a bunch of shows where Dave Hodge hosted Coach's
00:03:59.720 Corner with Don and Dave Hodge had no patience and no time for Don. We were in Calgary one time
00:04:11.460 and we had a 15-minute window to send them Coach's Corner because we were the national game that
00:04:17.620 night. So Don went to where the national game was. So there'd be an early game in Toronto,
00:04:21.720 but then we were the national game in Calgary. So we had 15, a 15-minute satellite window to do
00:04:27.700 Coach's Corner, Dave and Don. It was all choreographed. It was all scripted. Nothing
00:04:33.040 was off the cuff. And at one point, Don had to talk about Chris Katsopoulos, who played for the
00:04:38.280 Hartford Whalers. And he could not, you know where this is going, he could not say Katsopoulos.
00:04:44.160 And instead of just letting it go, David stopped and said, Don, it's Katsopoulos.
00:04:48.960 Let's do it again.
00:04:50.580 Well, now we're doing this for the third time.
00:04:52.620 And they're saying in Toronto, you only have a four minutes left on the window.
00:04:55.820 And I'm saying, guys, you can't stop again.
00:04:58.500 You have to do this.
00:05:00.260 So he gets it.
00:05:01.280 He kicks Katsopoulos again.
00:05:02.980 And Dave just goes, whatever.
00:05:06.300 And then they carry on.
00:05:08.240 And so they were just at loggerheads the whole time.
00:05:11.200 And then Ron took over from Dave after Dave flipped his pen, and Ron was kind of a kinder, gentler Dave.
00:05:18.720 He would kind of guide Don in a direction he thought would benefit Don, whereas I don't think Dave ever did that.
00:05:26.040 I think Dave and Don were just kind of an entertainment mechanism, and Ron and Don became more than that.
00:05:31.660 and so was it about that 86 87 88 that two or three year window where dawn went from being on
00:05:40.580 hockey night in canada being the guy in canada yeah that's probably right that's probably right
00:05:47.100 and he he had a few uh moments and opportunities i remember i was in montreal the night that the
00:05:53.360 flyers and the canadians fought before the game even started and i know ron and don were there
00:05:58.660 and I was in the studio, I was talking to Don and he got very upset at one point about something I
00:06:02.980 can't remember. He may or may not have lunged at me. I don't know if I can reveal that here, but
00:06:08.580 I think when Don had those opportunities, he was kind of at his best because he'd say, 0.81
00:06:14.240 this is ridiculous. This is crazy. This should never happen. That should never happen. So 0.98
00:06:18.740 I think those things kind of helped build him into a star. And I thought Ron was really good
00:06:23.140 at kind of molding that persona that had started back in the 80s
00:06:29.260 when it was really rough, and he kind of smoothed Don out a little bit.
00:06:33.440 So before we get into sort of any criticism of Ron McClain,
00:06:37.060 explain to the people watching this, Steve,
00:06:40.000 what was it about Ron that made him so good
00:06:42.020 that for so long in Canadian broadcasting?
00:06:45.620 Isn't that funny?
00:06:46.940 So John Shannon, who was our senior producer in Calgary,
00:06:50.560 and I, we have to replace Jim Van Horn, who's hosting the Flames on two and seven, a midweek
00:06:56.780 broadcast. And this is in 1984. Jim Van Horn goes to TSN. We have to replace him. So we're going to
00:07:04.020 audition 11 people. If I recall correctly, I've got it in my notes somewhere, but we're going to
00:07:08.360 audition 11 people and a bunch of people, guys from CFCN in Calgary, maybe another person from
00:07:15.880 Red Deer, a few more people at two and seven.
00:07:19.880 And we're gonna basically mock up an intermission.
00:07:23.040 We're gonna come back, Jim Poplinski, God love him,
00:07:25.500 came in and he was our player guest, yeah.
00:07:28.560 So all the guys would interview Pep.
00:07:30.760 And then we'd go to break, they'd have to throw to break,
00:07:33.140 they'd come back, they'd do some out of town scores.
00:07:35.520 We'd throw back to break, they'd come back,
00:07:37.100 they'd do a highlight pack from an out of town game
00:07:39.640 that we had built and given them a script for.
00:07:42.340 And then we would finish and we'd have recorded them
00:07:45.180 And then we'd look back.
00:07:46.940 And so we're working with the guys, you know, okay, stand by.
00:07:50.960 We're going to break now.
00:07:51.880 You can go to break in 10, 9.
00:07:53.300 We're counting them through just like producers do.
00:07:56.660 And then Ron sat down.
00:07:58.700 And Ron was just like he'd been doing this for 20 years.
00:08:03.940 He was so relaxed and so calm and so confident.
00:08:08.740 And he'd say something wrong and he'd go, oh, sorry about that.
00:08:12.620 But here's what I meant.
00:08:13.480 And he carries on, whereas everybody else would get flustered,
00:08:16.480 and you could see them.
00:08:17.300 A couple of the guys, you could literally see the sweat coming down.
00:08:20.520 And Ron was just like he'd been doing it forever.
00:08:22.640 And I remember I looked at John, and John looked at me and goes,
00:08:25.440 I know we have to finish this, but we're done, right?
00:08:27.840 And he goes, yeah.
00:08:29.140 And that was it.
00:08:30.220 That was it.
00:08:31.040 That Ron was in.
00:08:33.680 But in the last few years, as great as Ron is and the legacy he has,
00:08:38.440 he's had some stumbles.
00:08:39.680 What was Ron's weakness or maybe his ultimate downfall towards the end of his career?
00:08:46.980 So I think the issue started with Ron.
00:08:51.560 There was one year, and I don't have it in front of me.
00:08:53.760 I'm going to say 20, 25 years ago.
00:08:56.480 He and Don either held out or couldn't agree on money with CBC at the start of the season.
00:09:02.620 And there was a huge hue and cry from hockey viewership saying, oh, my God, we can't do this without Ron and Don.
00:09:09.680 And then they came back.
00:09:12.160 And I think when that happens, your head kind of goes and just gets a little bit bigger.
00:09:20.380 And unless you have a production team that says, no, we're going to stay in our lane.
00:09:26.540 We're not going to believe everything we read.
00:09:30.260 We're going to stay right here.
00:09:32.300 Unless somebody governs that, people will do what they're allowed to do.
00:09:38.120 and I think that was the start of the issue
00:09:40.840 because I found at the end, Ron wasn't in his lane.
00:09:46.560 Ron was in every lane on the roadway
00:09:48.780 and I don't, that's never been a host role to me.
00:09:52.760 I've watched a million,
00:09:53.780 I've been a sports television fan since the 1960s.
00:09:57.360 I've watched every host do their job.
00:09:59.580 Brent Musburger, Jim...
00:10:08.120 You