Why Dave Hodge was cut from the Hockey Night in Canada team
Commentator couldn't hide frustration with 1987 CBC decision to abandon sports in progress — twice
The pen flip didn't look like much. But when hockey commentator Dave Hodge had to tell viewers that CBC was ditching a tied Habs-Flyers game for the news, it capped the words of frustration that would cost him his job.
"Now, Montreal and the Philadelphia Flyers are currently playing overtime and — are we able to go there or not?" he asked an unseen producer on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada on Mar. 14, 1987.
"We are not able to go there. That's the way things go today in sports and this network."
He was referring to an occasion earlier that day, when CBC had bailed on the end of a B.C.-Newfoundland semifinal curling match during the Brier to take viewers to live coverage of the federal NDP convention.
'How we do things'
"And the Flyers and Canadiens have us in suspense and we'll remain that way until we can find out somehow who won this game, or who's responsible for how we do things around here," Hodge went on. "Goodnight for Hockey Night in Canada."
As the closing music swelled, Hodge looked away and lightly tossed the pen he was holding in the air so that it flipped 360 degrees before landing on his desk.
After that night's scheduled Leafs-Flames hockey match ended unexpectedly early, CBC had gone to the Philadelphia-Montreal game in progress. But when the network decided to leave it just before overtime in a tied game, Hodge couldn't hide his frustration.
It took over two weeks before CBC reporter Jane Chalmers picked up the story, on March 31, 1987.
"Dave Hodge felt cast as the bad guy," she said."It's a role he wouldn't play convincingly."
'Under review'
Whether Hodge would still have a role to play at Hockey Night in Canada was up in the air, according to his employers.
"Dave Hodge has not been fired," said Don Wallace of Ohlmeyer Communications, the company that produced HNIC for the CBC. "He has been under review for the last two weeks."
But Hodge himself had a different view.
"I'm announcing today that I've been fired," he said from Vancouver. "I don't see how I could ever be back there."
Hodge, who had worked as a commentator for Hockey Night in Canada for 16 years, was flying to Toronto from his Vancouver home for the show each week. He had moved there six months earlier after taking a job as sports director at Vancouver radio station CKNW, according to a January 1987 profile in the Globe and Mail.
Ron MacLean's big break
Hodge's absence turned out to be an opportunity for 26-year-old Ron MacLean. He had occasionally filled in for Hodge on Saturdays and had been hosting midweek games after Hodge moved to Vancouver, according to the Toronto Star.
MacLean has remained at Hockey Night in Canada ever since, though his role changed somewhat for a period after Rogers took over the broadcast rights to NHL games from CBC in 2014.
A day before this news report aired, Al Strachan at the Globe and Mail reported that MacLean had been brought in "for the next two telecasts."
Strachan also inaccurately reported that Hodge "broke his pencil in disgust" and "threw it up in the air" at the end of his last Hockey Night in Canada broadcast.
'It wasn't entirely professional'
The next day, Peter Downie of CBC's Midday heard the full story from Hodge's perspective.
"Do you regret any of this at all?" asked Downie.
From Vancouver, Hodge conceded that "it wasn't the normal way" to sign off from Hockey Night in Canada.
"It wasn't entirely professional, and for that I'm willing to say that I was wrong," he said. But he took issue with the CBC's broadcast policy during live sporting events.
"I think there are other ways of doing it than putting me on the screen and telling the viewers something that I didn't like to hear," he added.
He admitted to already being frustrated about the Brier curling match (which, according to the Globe and Mail, he had been watching alongside his broadcasting colleague Bob Cole).
"After investing a good part of my time in watching something, I couldn't see what I wanted to see most, and that is who won."
He said the audience's interests came foremost in his mind.
"It's not in my nature to try to shove something down an audience's throat that I wouldn't accept myself and indeed rebelled at earlier the very same day," he said. "I think that the audience is the most important part of what we do."
The producer's role
"I implored the producer if he had to do what I thought he might have to do ... please do it by not using me," said Hodge.
He didn't think there should be a person on screen to deliver "this kind of a bad message."
Rather, he asked the producer to go with a voice-over from Montreal, or to deliver the message in another way, given how strongly Hodge felt about abandoning the hockey broadcast.
But that didn't happen, and Hodge was put on the air to sign off.
"I said goodnight in what I've said is an abnormal fashion, but my feelings spilled over perhaps," Hodge said.
On April 3, The Globe and Mail reported that the CBC and Ohlmeyer Communications issued a press release saying that "Hodge's departure has been accepted with regret."
