The hockey world mourned the loss of legendary play-by-play broadcaster Bob Cole Wednesday. But in this feature story from The Hockey News’ Dec. 6, 1996 edition (Volume 50, Issue 13), writer Mark Brender spoke to Cole about his incredible career – which still had another 23 years to go.
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Cole was tutored early in his career by iconic broadcaster Foster Hewitt, and Hewitt’s advice resonated with Cole as he became hockey’s best play-by-play man.
“Climb into it and flow with it and try to feel it if you can,” Cole said of Hewitt’s advice.
Cole worked until he was 85 years old before retiring in 2019, but his overarching passion to be the “perfect” broadcaster lasted his entire professional life.
“I suppose I’m never quite satisfied,” Cole told Brender, “but it’s all over when it’s over. There’s another game tomorrow.”
Related: Bob Cole Dies at 90: What the Legendary Broadcaster Means to Hockey and Canada
COLE’S DISTINCTIVE CALL MADE HOCKEY HISTORY
Vol. 50, No. 13, Dec. 6, 1996
By Mark Brender
Bob Cole had the best teacher around when he broke into the hockey broadcasting business in 1969 – legend Foster Hewitt.
“Climb into it and flow with it and try to feel it if you can,” Cole remembers Hewitt advising him. There was one other rule: Never let yourself become bigger than the game.
It’s counsel that has served Cole well.
Twenty-seven years later, Cole is still going strong as lead play-by-play man on Hockey Night in Canada, a job he took over from Bill Hewitt in the late 1970s. Cole, who says he is “in the vicinity of 60,” was scheduled to be presented with the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award for excellence in broadcasting at the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Toronto Nov. 25.
There was one occasion Cole thought he’d forsaken Hewitt’s words and gone too far. It was Jan. 11, 1976 and he was broadcasting from near ice level at the Philadelphia Spectrum, about 20 feet above the visitors’ bench for the much-anticipated game between the touring Central Red Army and Stanley Cup champion Philadelphia Flyers.
The Red Army came out flying and the Flyers came out like the Broad Street Bullies, slamming into anything that moved.
The Red Army decided it had suffered enough abuse after a vicious hit by Flyers’ defenseman Ed Van Impe.
There was a stoppage in play and the Red Army players huddled at the bench. Then Cole looked down, saw them open the gate to the tunnel leading to the dressing room and watched as a row of red helmets disappeared. And then people across Canada heard the famous words: “They’re going home! They’re going home! “
Later that night. Cole turned to CBC producer Ralph Mellanby as they were boarding a plane to leave Philadelphia and apologized for blowing the call.
Mellanby, of course, would have none of it. “He said, ‘Bob, you didn’t blow anything. That was the best three minutes we’ve had all year,” Cole recalls.
It turned out to be one of the most famous calls in hockey history.
Cole recently unearthed the tape of his first radio broadcast ever: April 24, 1969, Game 6 of the semifinal playoff series between the Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens, the night Jean Beliveau scored the only overtime goal of his career.
Listening to it now, Cole finds the voice strangely unfamiliar, although his daughter Megan says it sounds exactly the same.
Harry Neale, the color analyst who works alongside Cole in the broadcast booth, once described him as forever being in search of “the perfect broadcast.”
“I suppose I’m never quite satisfied,” Cole says, “but it’s all over when it’s over. There’s another game tomorrow.”
The Hockey News Archive is an exclusive collection of more than 2,640 issues and more than 156,000 articles exclusively produced for subscribers, chronicling the complete history of The Hockey News from 1947 until this day. Visit the archives at THN.com/archive and subscribe today at subscribe.thehockeynews.com
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