This past week was was pretty special for this writer, having had my first opportunity to guest on two premier sports satellite channels as a guest commentator. This past Thursday, I was invited on Hockey Night In Canada’s Sirius Satellite Channel 97 and 127, to discuss the Stanley Cup playoffs with host Jeff Marek, who I had worked with in the mid 1990’s, when we both were working at the Fan 590 in Toronto. Like many Canadians, Hockey Night In Canada was almost like a baby sitter for me, when I was a youngster growing up in the suburbs of Toronto in the 1960’s. My passion for hockey, and at that time , the Toronto Maple Leafs, was fostered through my early and weekly exposure to watching the traditional anchor and jewel of Canadian sports broadcasting. The bonding between myself and Hockey Night, played a prominent role in my choice to later in life, enter my university training and chosen profession, in radio and television communications. To become a guest on Hockey Night, and especially with someone who I had worked with previously, like Jeff Marek, made the first time experience even more special.
Adding to that terrific evening, was my opportunity to go on air Saturday and Sunday evenings with XM Radio channel 204, on “Ice Cap,” with co-host Terry Mercury. This came about as well, from a friendship with another Fan colleague, Joe Thistel, Director of Programming for XM Canada. It’s almost as though the original Fan staffers, have developed their own satellite network of former colleagues. What were the odds, that both opportunities would come in the same week ? Not very likely, but the coinciding of the two, is pretty unreal when you consider the odds of this happening so close together.
Even the satellite angle of this development, is somewhat of a historical anchor for me. After I had completed my Hockey Night In Canada interview on Thursday evening, I turned on the Leafs TV channel, and their classic game that night, was from 1962, featuring the Leafs and Blackhawks in a Stanley Cup final game at the Chicago Stadium. That year, 1962, was my earliest recall of watching Maple Leafs hockey on Hockey Night In Canada. Interestingly enough, it was also the the year that the first communications satellite was put into orbit. It was named “Telstar”, and that same year, a British band, “The Tornados,” released a song named Telstar, and the instrumental, with unique outer space like sound effects , which were produced simplistically, became a Billboard Hot 100 smash hit, and the song became the first from the U.K. to reach number one, on the prestigious list. I found it fascinating that on the same night that I was a guest on Hockey Night, that I would see a Leafs game from the same year that I started to watch that prestigious program, and that also being the year of the Telstar launch. My being on satellite radio that very same evening, made the timing of it all, almost seem surreal.