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 .

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