Gordon Lightfoot Forums - Lightfoot doing hockey play by play??

Ron and I had a laff over this: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Should+...098/story.html

Bruce Deachman says that Hockey Night in Canada announcer Bob Cole is Emily Carr, Robertson Davies, and Gordon Lightfoot rolled into one.

The monumental collapse of the Toronto Maple Leafs Monday night had consequences beyond merely spiking the chances of a playoff resumption of the Battle of Ontario.

For by not-so-gracefully handing over their second-round berth to the Boston Bruins, the Leafs left Ottawa the only Canadian franchise standing among the remaining eight contenders, thereby ensuring that much of Hockey Night in Canada’s considerable resources will now be focused on the Sens.

Not insignificantly, that means Jim Hughson will take the play-by-play baton from Bob Cole, the excitable octogenarian Leafs fan and CBC announcer who brings to the sport an unprecedented level of viewer engagement (or “engage level,” it may soon be called, competing with current buzzphrase “compete level”).

Too bad, for Cole is television’s version of the “Spot the Differences” puzzles on the cartoon pages of newspapers, where readers are challenged every Saturday morning to discover the eight inconsistencies in a pair of seemingly identical drawings. With CBC’s version, however, viewers have no idea in advance how many “errors” they’re looking for, nor of what type. Some are factual ones, such as when Cole repeatedly pretends to confuse Sens Erik Karlsson and Sergei Gonchar (even though the numbers 65 and 55 on their backs can be seen, unaided, from the International Space Station), or when he “accidentally” re-christened Habs defenceman P.K. Subban, changing the K to a J.

Others are simply matters of clarity. During the opening game of the Senators-Habs series, for example, he blurted, not at all inaccurately, “Look out! He’s going to shoot it maybe.” In a 2011 playoff game between Montreal and Boston, meanwhile, he brilliantly announced that “Everything is happening,” which might have been more successful in tripping up radio listeners than TV viewers and theoretical physicists.

Cole, of course, whose salary, unlike that of other networks’ announcers, is paid by Canadian taxpayers, has his detractors. He’s too old, some say. He’s out of touch. He’s never once correctly identified a goalie by name. He makes Don Cherry look good, or at least a little less embarrassing.

Shame on you, I say to these “accuracy snobs.” I don’t need a play-by-play announcer to tell me what I’m already seeing. I need someone to interpret what’s happening, someone experienced in collating all the visual and aural data and presenting it as a cohesive landscape. I need an Emily Carr, a Gordon Lightfoot, a Robertson Davies, a Gordon Pinsent.

I need Bob Cole.

Seriously, compare the opening lines of first-line Canadian poet Raymond Souster’s Riding the Thundering Horse — “To be told in print at age sixty-three/that you’re not a poet/because what you write aren’t poems,/isn’t the help it might have been/at, say, twenty-three. — with any of Cole’s untitled and off-the-cuff works from the Ottawa-Montreal series: “The crowd, waiting to jump/Hoping to get a chance/to jump,” for example, or “They’re ahead /in a game they must win,/you might say.”

There’s simply no comparison; Souster’s is a discarded laundry list beside Cole’s winged mellifluousness. Souster screams “Look at me,” while Cole invites Canadians to celebrate the indestructible hockey quilt that covers and warms this country. There should be a Canada Council grant in his name.

However reluctantly, though, we must accept certain facts, and as permanent an engraving as he will most certainly scratch on our national psyche/headstone, he is 80 years old this year and will someday need to be replaced (God willing not before getting to announce to all of Canada that the Leafs have finally defeated “that other team, the one in red, the one with the goalie” to win the Stanley Cup).

As Canadians, we cannot leave it to the CBC to unilaterally choose Cole’s replacement, or we’ll wind up with someone like David Suzuki (“Alfredsson sends the puck the length of the ice, which is getting thinner as global warming and declining beaver numbers take their toll”) or Randy Bachman (“You can see the fire in the eyes of Habs centre Tomas Plekanec, which reminds me of the time we performed These Eyes for the 15,000th time, back in the old Montreal Forum, and Burton was throwing up backstage and we blew the fuses during sound check and ... oh, wait, he scores! Anyway, Burton was throwing up and ... ”).

Perhaps noted hockey enthusiast Stephen Harper will have accomplished all he wants from his current job by then and will be looking for a career change. I melt at the thought of hearing “I can state unequivocally that Jarome Iginla has pounced on the rebound, but that his subsequent shot in no way affected the outcome of this or any other game.” Once or twice a season, he could show his lighter side by taking a turn at the organ.

Then again, super-popular astronaut Chris Hadfield would be a marvellous choice. Instead of filling slower moments with almost constant announcements of how much time remains on the clock, he could demonstrate how prolonged weightlessness affects a team’s use of time and space on the power play, or how the time remaining in the game actually increases as a player’s speed approaches that of light. Actor Ryan Gosling could just sit beside him and quietly roll a toothpick between his lips and be cool. Ratings would soar.

Or Ottawa-born R&B star Keshia Chanté could help draw a much-needed younger demographic to the network. “That Chris Neil,” she’ll say, “He’s the one I want to be around when I’m doing what I’m doing if he’s doing it, too.” Cole, who might agree to take on the colour commentary duties for a season or two while Keshia learns the ropes, could throw in his trademark “Oh, baby.”

And perhaps Cole’s illustrious Hall of Fame career might best be summed up in a 2008 quote attributed to him: “Nothing was about to happen, but it almost ... did.”

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Should+...#ixzz2TNE2m5x1