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Printed Nov 08, 2024 • 4 minute learn
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The Class of 2024 (type left) Krissy Wendell, Shea Weber, Jeremy Roenick, Pavel Datsyuk, Natalie Darwitz, David Poile and Colin Campbell pose for a photograph alternative throughout media availability on the Hockey Corridor Of Fame on November 08, 2024 in Toronto. Photograph by Bruce Bennett /Getty Pictures
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Jeremy Roenick is aware of he’s made headlines for the improper causes a couple of occasions throughout his post-playing media profession.
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However the newly minted Corridor of Famer believes it’s very important that hockey commentary proceed to push the envelope to win new followers and maintain 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 mentioned Friday on the Corridor 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 velocity and bodily contact hardly ever interprets to the identical emotion amongst commentators.
“It’s just been the mentality around the NHL for a long time,” Roenick mentioned. “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 purpose as Colin Campbell says, is to maintain attempting to make the sport excellent. The fact is that the NHL’s personal individuals are typically the largest impediment. It’s the character of the beast, says the league’s senior government vice-president for hockey operations, officiating and Central Scouting.
It started with Campbell and big selection of gamers and execs re-writing the principles for the ‘new NHL’ in 2005 after that season’s lockout and continues to this present day when the guide will get tweaked.
“You always make your job harder when you put in new rules,” mentioned Campbell, who enters the Corridor’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
Sadly, this period of the robocall has made it more durable on the Corridor of Fame choice committee to tell its inductees of the excellent news.
That was the case in June as Mike Gartner and Lanny McDonald tried to trace 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 mentioned “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 one other recorded request for marketing campaign donations from one of many U.S. presidential candidates. He ultimately referred to as the quantity again and acquired the Corridor’s pre-recorded ticket buy line, however not less than had an inkling what was up. When Gartner and McDonald reached him, he was in a protracted Starbucks drive-through line and by the point the barista handed him his order he was bawling with pleasure, leaving the restaurant’s workers questioning if he was in misery.
Weber was on a golf course in B.C., about to putt and was bothered when his telephone stored going off. Additionally pondering it was 416 spam, he rejected two or three calls, earlier than Kelly Masse from the Corridor acquired a maintain of him by textual content.
ELEPHANT’S MEMORY
For Leafs coach Craig Berube, Friday’s Corridor of Fame Recreation was just like the outdated TV present This Is Your Life.
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He had a connection to virtually all of the inductees, from working underneath 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 mentioned. “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.”
Till 5 years later, when Berube was with the Philadelphia Phantoms of the AHL and Roenick the mum or dad Flyers. The primary time the golf equipment practised on the similar facility, Berube got here proper into the Flyers room in search of Roenick. The latter admitted he’d began the entire thing by working goalie Ron Hextall and thought Berube had overwhelmed him up sufficient within the ensuing battle earlier than getting his one shot in whereas he was wrapped up. However Roenick figured any considered retribution was water underneath 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
Additionally going into the Corridor in Monday’s induction within the media wing are Elmer Ferguson Award winner Scott Burnside. It was full circle for Burnside to have the Wings and Leafs within the Corridor sport as he labored on the Ontario Chronicle and Ontario Chronicle protecting the respective groups after initially working within the Ontario Chronicle’s information division.
Toronto-born Eric Duhatschek, a previous Ferguson winner, introduced his retirement Friday. His 46-year profession started in his hometown as a Solar freelancer and expanded to the Calgary Solar, Ontario Chronicle, Globe and Mail, The Athletic and a stint on Hockey Evening in Canada’s Satellite Sizzling Range.
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