Rick Westhead stands half-dressed in the empty parking lot of BMO Field, Toronto’s soccer stadium. After hurriedly buttoning up his white shirt, he grabs a tie and blue suit jacket out of the back seat of his Jeep, using the window as his mirror. He just came from playing shinny and could have easily put the suit on at the rink, but he would rather stay comfortable as long as possible. As Westhead finishes dressing, TSN cameraman Marc Malette pulls up beside him and exclaims, “That’s not your look!”

Westhead chuckles. He can only recall a couple of times when he had to wear a suit during his 12 years at the Toronto Star. Now that he’s a senior correspondent for TSN, things are a little different. The suit is just one part; wearing a cage on his hockey helmet to avoid a puck in the face is another.

He’s here to interview Earl Cochrane, the Canadian Soccer Association’s deputy general secretary, about the organization’s support of Bill C-290, a private members bill that would permit single-event sports gambling in Canada. Westhead sets up with Cochrane on the sideline of the field, not quite sure how close to stand or where to hold the microphone. Malette helps him out with each shot.

Westhead may be a rookie when it comes to television, but he’s a veteran reporter, having worked for several publications including the Star, Bloomberg News and The New York Times. Since joining TSN in August 2014, he’s been chasing sports stories as far away from press conferences as possible, whether it’s outlining a hostage drill practiced by the federal government before the Sochi Olympics or exposing rampant steroid use in Canadian collegiate sports. He’s an integral part of TSN’s growing commitment to business, investigative and human-interest sports journalism—an investment that could be essential after the network’s recent loss in the battle for national NHL hockey rights.

In November 2013, Rogers Communications Inc. (the parent company of TSN’s main rival Sportsnet) paid $5.2 billion to become the NHL’s exclusive broadcaster and multimedia partner in Canada through the 2025-2026 season. It’s now airing several games every week across nine channels including CBC, City, FX Canada and the array of Sportsnet stations. It’s also bolstered its broadcast teams, expanding to 30 analysts and reporters focused on hockey throughout the country. George Stroumboulopoulos is now the face of Hockey Night in Canada, while long-time HNIC host Ron MacLean leads Sunday night’s Rogers Hometown Hockey. TSN retained some regional games for the Toronto Maple Leafs and Winnipeg Jets, as well as the Montreal Canadiens on its French sister station RDS. Both stations now also air Ottawa Senators games. But after losing the bid for national rights, TSN is in the unexpected position of having to re-evaluate exactly what it means to be “Canada’s Sports Leader.”

For years, TSN held the widely accepted journalistic edge in sports broadcasting. In Canada, hockey reigns, and TSN has insiders such as Bob McKenzie and Darren Dreger—respected reporters who have made careers out of breaking hockey news. Like ESPN in the United States, which has in recent years released improved video features and documentaries such as its 30 for 30 series, TSN has seen the value in covering sports in the context of the greater culture, outside the vacuum of the arena.

ReOrientation, the three-part series exploring homophobia in pro sports hosted by former NHL player-turned-analyst Aaron Ward, aired in January 2014. In June 2013, the network produced Neutral Zone, a documentary set in a hockey school in northern Israel that examined whether having Jewish and Arab children play hockey together could promote tolerance. Such engaging storytelling and in-depth reporting is increasingly important in sports journalism. Brian Cooper, a former vice-president of business development and operations at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, sees everyone looking for the “extra edge” to draw in viewers; now that edge means having more to say than who played well in a game. “It’s everything about the league and the personalities that make it up,” Cooper says. “You have to go much deeper than ever before.”

Not just that, says Ken Volden, TSN’s vice president and executive producer of studio production and news information: “You have to give context; you have to be trusted.” His network’s brand, he says, is “Sports. Information. Entertainment,” and his goal is to make viewers feel something when watching TSN. To do that, he needs to hire strong reporters. “Substance, more than ever, matters.” But Sportsnet’s shadow looms ever-larger thanks to its expensive broadcast rights, improved production values and expanded roster of expert analysts and seasoned journalists. TSN can no longer simply coast on its reputation: “Canada’s Sports Leader” now has to prove itself.

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Westhead fits neatly into TSN’s effort to emphasize emotionally stirring yet journalistically sound
storytelling. During his time at the Star, he served as the paper’s South Asia bureau chief based in India. When he returned to Toronto in late 2011, his reporting focused on foreign affairs and international development, while also dipping into some sports business. He chased stories that looked at the inner workings of Russia’s national hockey league expansion and the profitability of the Canadian NHL market as the game floundered in the United States after the 2005 lockout. “I think he views the world differently than someone who’s covered a team for 20 years,” says Volden, adding the network will continue to target reporters like Westhead: storytellers.

In the 1990s and even early 2000s, sports broadcasters trailed far behind newspapers when it came to breaking news. The networks would read the papers, then get the writers on air the next day to talk about their stories. They showed games, but did little original reporting outside of them. Over the past few years that mindset has shifted; networks now want to lead. Instead of piggybacking on print, they’re hiring the journalists who were writing those stories and turning them into on-air talent, bloggers and columnists for their websites.

Westhead joins the growing list of writers that sports networks have wooed away from print. In the past four years, TSN poached Mark Masters and Matthew Scianitti from the National Post. In 2011, Sportsnet lured Michael Grange from The Globe and Mail and, more recently, brought on Damien Cox, who’s now full-time at Sportsnet, though he still writes a column for the Star once a week. This is due, in part, to the shrinking pool of up-and-coming sports broadcasters: smaller shows such as Sportsline (later known as Global Sports) no longer exist. Only Sportsnet and TSN are left standing, both major networks owned by telecommunications giants. “Where do you hire your next wave of people,” Volden asks, “when there are so few television shows other than at our level?”

Westhead didn’t want to be a talking head, so it took several months of negotiations to convince him to join TSN. The network has given him plenty of journalistic freedom. In November 2014, he travelled to China to explore the world of counterfeit jerseys, tickets and memorabilia. He’s also reported on former CFL all-star Arland Bruce’s lawsuit against the league—one of TSN’s major broadcast partners. In the lawsuit, Bruce alleges the CFL doesn’t do enough to protect its players or educate them about the long-term effects of concussions. The suit also alleges the league is misleading the public about the dangers of playing football after such injuries. The allegations have not yet been proven and the CFL has asked for the case to be dismissed.

Chris Zelkovich, a sports media blogger for Yahoo! Canada who has been covering the sports industry for 17 years, says he’s never come across a sports reporter with Westhead’s responsibilities—to work in courts, gain access to executive boardrooms and file freedom of information requests, rather than break trade deals or file game recaps. This, Zelkovich says, is part of a greater trend in Canadian sports broadcasting: hosts and analysts becoming more professional. He’s noticed that the Rogers-run HNIC has a tougher journalistic approach than before. As a CBC production, analysts referred to NHL executives by their nicknames, calling former Leafs general manager Brian Burke “Burkie” and then-chief disciplinarian for the NHL Colin Campbell “Collie.” “These were their friends,” says Zelkovich. “But you’re not going to hear that now. There’s less of a feeling that, ‘We’re all in this together.’”

Sportsnet began stepping up its storytelling game in 2011 with the launch of its own biweekly magazine, which immediately became the only magazine dedicated to longform sports writing in Canada—a venue where 2,500-word stories are “lighter” pieces and major features run more than double that length. Dan Robson was one of the first employees hired to work as a senior writer at Sportsnet Magazine, leaving his job at the Star. “There’s no real outlet like this in Canada,” he says. “Sport lends itself to narrative, and this gives us a place to explore it.”

The writers measure their work against all other longform sports journalism written in North America, Robson says, whether it’s in Sports Illustrated or The Walrus. But there are only two major players in English-speaking Canada for cross-platform sports journalism, and he writes for the magazine arm of one of them. He can’t ignore TSN, even if it doesn’t have its own comparable publication. But with Westhead on board, Robson says, the network is making a statement that the days of running a website that relies largely on Canadian Press copy are over. “When I see Westhead go to TSN, I think we need to be reminded that this is a very competitive market.”

And compete Sportsnet has. Over the past few years, it has earned viewers’ attention with a solid team of reporters adding colourful insight, smart analysis and context to stories around the games that easily rivals TSN’s efforts. Where TSN is staking a unique position, though, is in its longform video features. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 2014, the network aired a documentary about former NHL players Peter and Anton Šťastný, who escaped from Czechoslovakia in 1980, and their older brother Marián who joined them in Canada one year later. Viewers praised the feature, with commenters on social media calling it a great piece of journalism. In October, three months after joining the network, Westhead got his first shot at a video feature of his own.

 ***

Sitting in a dimly lit school gymnasium, Westhead studies his typed notes, furiously scribbling out interview questions he doesn’t like and writing in late additions by hand. Seventeen-year-old Sameer Fathazada sits across from him, staring into space, not quite sure what to do with himself while he waits for a question. The production lights flick on and it’s time to begin. Westhead gently guides Fathazada through the telling of his life story for the camera. He arrived as a refugee from Afghanistan in 2007, and is now being touted as the next Canadian soccer superstar. He’s been on two training stints with different German clubs, and if he went to play there, he could become a German citizen and qualify for their national team. This might be a goal for some players, Fathazada explains, but it’s not his. “It’s important for me to represent Canada because of the things they’ve done for my family,” he tells the camera. “There’s no other way to repay them than do something good for the country like play for the national team.” It’s a made-for-television moment.

“These are the stories that get me excited,” says Westhead. Normally, you might expect a feature on Fathazada after his first appearance for Canada, or if he signed a professional contract (and there’s no certainty he ever will). But it’s his story off the field that Westhead finds special: “It shows that there are good news stories to tell from us being in Afghanistan,” he says. It connects us as Canadians, whether or not you care about soccer. But this is still television. After the interview, the TSN crew stays to watch Fathazada’s game. During the second half, they shoot some footage of him as he rests on the bench—at one point even dressing the teen in a Team Canada jersey and having him pose with the Canadian flag draped around him.

Last year, Westhead might have turned Fathazada’s story into a Star feature, finding the power in the player’s words and history.But television adores these sorts of images—a talented young refugee, literally wrapped in his adopted country’s flag. Such stories hit Volden’s target dead centre: they make people feel something. Westhead’s job, then, is to elicit that emotional response without sacrificing journalistic integrity. That’s a challenging task when images are as important as words in a story.

As he drives home from the match, his car smelling of the Afghani food Fathazada’s mother gave him, he recounts his time in Japan right after the 2011 tsunami. “I was stuck in Sendai, relatively close to the Fukushima reactor that everybody was worried about. I didn’t know if I could get out,” Westhead says. “It’s thrilling when you feel like you’re in the centre of these stories. It’s what so many journalists want—to be there, to witness and document it.”

As he drives, he talks about the people he met there. One man got separated from his wife and went scuba diving through their town looking for her. He found her, alive, after three days. Another family wasn’t so lucky. As the warning sirens blared, a daughter helped her mother up the stairs to a safer floor of their house, then went back to get her own child. The daughter came back and handed over her child, just as a wave came crashing in and swept her away, leaving grandmother and grandchild clutching each other.

He pauses. “It’s tough after doing that kind of journalism to find anything that’s going to be like it.” Stories like Fathazada’s may be as close as he gets. The war in Afghanistan was long, the costs to both that country and Canada high, but here was a positive story to dig out of the aftermath. As the crew shot footage of her son, a giant smile stretched across the face of Fathazada’s mother. Westhead was smiling too: here’s a kid who survived, came to Canada and now has a chance to become a professional soccer player. You see Fathazada smothered in the country’s colours, but you hear his words, and the thought that creeps in—that this is shameless jingoism—is drowned out, even if only for a moment. There’s joy and hope here. In Westhead’s care, it’s more nuanced than most sports stories. In his telling, it’s tough to say this is just about a game.

 ***

At Toronto’s Air Canada Centre, TSN reporter Mark Masters gets set to watch the Leafs play the Tampa Bay Lightning. Two nights earlier, the Leafs suffered an embarrassing 9-2 loss to the Nashville Predators, so when the time comes for his pre-game over-the-boards interview, Masters goes after captain Dion Phaneuf, asking him about the team’s mood and what they need to do to improve. After the second period, Masters catches up with Leafs forward James van Riemsdyk—whose two-goal night would help lift Toronto over Tampa Bay—before he can enter the dressing room. “We want to be first to get player reactions,” says Masters. “They still have energy, they haven’t gone into the dressing room yet—it’s unfiltered.” But many athletes are now experts when talking to journalists, and those about to play a game will rarely give an answer worthy of a nightly recap show. “I’m not going to lie and say there’s always insight,” says Masters. “But there’s a chance, and why wouldn’t you do it if there’s a chance?” This access to players is a large part of what companies pay for with broadcast rights. Masters is down at ice level tonight because TSN is showing the game, but on Saturday he’ll be back up in the press box.

For hockey analysis, says Zelkovich, TSN has always been the leader, but “the problem for them is people will already be watching the game on another channel and won’t flip back to see what TSN is saying.” Cooper agrees that while TSN has the edge for now, Sportsnet is quickly catching up in terms of numbers of viewers. Cross-promotion means strong journalists, such as Cox and Elliotte Friedman, are showing up everywhere from news shows on Sportsnet to HNIC on CBC, as well as the website and radio stations. Stroumboulopoulos, too, is a dynamic interviewer who’s already managed to make interesting television with Sidney Crosby and Wayne Gretzky—not exactly the most controversial speakers. He also takes some weight off analysts such as Nick Kypreos, who’s far more natural having fun on the fake ice rink in the studio, acting out plays as former player and current analyst Kelly Hrudey chirps him from the net.

With a program that seems, for once, carefully crafted and suited to the skills and strengths of its contributors, it could be only a matter of time before Sportsnet overtakes TSN as the place to be for analysis too. “The public is getting used to them,” says Cooper. “Sportsnet seems irreverent and younger, while TSN is more serious and older.”

Irreverent or not, Sportsnet is making a serious bet with the NHL; the 12-year partnership has the network airing 350 national regular season games over nine channels. That’s a lot of hockey, and this season’s first Saturday night did earn HNIC a record 9.8 million viewers. But Zelkovich says the television business doesn’t run on audience reach—it’s more concerned with the average viewers per minute, and by that measurement, the inaugural HNIC broadcast was actually down from last year. According to Numeris broadcast ratings, Rogers’ average for Eastern games on opening weekend fell 40 percent from 2013.

The problem may be that Rogers, despite its enviable rights, is spreading the games across too many channels. But this partnership is still young, and its legacy will ultimately be much more than just a few early weeks of subpar performances. The network, Cooper points out, is creating new viewing days, and in a few years, Sunday night hockey could be a tradition of its own. Whatever learning curve Sportsnet experiences adapting to broadcasting all this hockey, it’s a better problem to have than the alternative.

 ***

On a September afternoon, Westhead sits at TSN headquarters in suburban Toronto as he and senior producer Paul Harrington discuss an upcoming video piece on the amount of income tax paid by NHL players. Westhead suggests focusing on three players: Phil Kessel of the Leafs; Dave Bolland, a former Leafs player who is now with the Florida Panthers; and Steven Stamkos, the Tampa Bay Lightning star from Markham, Ontario, who’s rumoured to be thinking about a move to Toronto in 2016 when he becomes a free agent. The premise is that Canadian taxes eat a lot of players’ salaries: Kessel is suffering, while Bolland pays no state income tax in Florida—will this affect Stamkos’s decision? Westhead leans back in his chair, legs stretched out, hands on his head, visualizing the piece. He wants to lead with Stamkos, the biggest star, but Harrington, the veteran producer, disagrees. “I’d put Stamkos last. He’s the meatier story, but he’s also theoretical, which works better with an actual example.”

Westhead mulls it over: “So, don’t take our word, ask Dave Bolland.” He laughs, sitting up and clapping his hands together, agreeing with Harrington. “This is completely different than newspapers,” he says. The rookie is learning how to mix good journalism with entertaining television. “It’s not for everybody—a piece on income tax in the NHL,” says Westhead. “Some people won’t want to see that every day on TSN, but it’s an important part of the business of hockey. If it’s helping drive decisions by free agents, then it’s worth people having a better understanding of how it works.” He returns to his desk, pounding out emails quickly on his laptop, coordinating a phone interview for a sports gambling story in a few minutes.

Westhead is slowly settling into his suit. “Television is really not easy,” he admits, but TSN is counting on him to master the technical aspect of it. He’s an essential piece in the effort to compete with Sportsnet.

Both networks are chasing many of the same stories, interviews and footage around the rink—and Sportsnet is just going to keep getting better at it. TSN needs Westhead to be out in the field, not just breaking stories, but setting a standard.

Photo courtesy PlainPicture

As executive producer of Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC), Ralph Mellanby committed what he considered his first act of journalism just by rewinding some tape. The sponsors, Molson and Imperial Oil, insisted the program not replay fights. Show them live, show the cheap shots that instigated them, but don’t show the fights again.

The rule lasted until April 4, 1968. That day, James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King; that evening, Liberals elected Pierre Trudeau party leader and prime minister. And that night, eight minutes into a playoff matchup between the Canadiens and the Bruins, Montreal’s John Ferguson and Boston’s Ted Green dropped the gloves. (Ferguson won.) But CBC didn’t show it, opting for news instead. Sensing the fight would set the tone for the rest of the series, though, Mellanby replayed it when HNIC finally went to air.

Fans were livid—because they’d missed the first period, that is. The outrage was so great that even CFTO, aCTV affiliate, fielded 150 calls from viewers who couldn’t reach the CBC switchboard. On a day that dramatically changed the political and social landscape of North America, Canadians just wanted to watch hockey.

While Mellanby’s defiance might have been brave, it’s a low benchmark for journalistic excellence. And despite the show’s periodic proclamations of a renewed focus on journalism, the old standard remains. On January 16, HNIC host Ron MacLean interviewed the NHL’s director of hockey operations, Colin Campbell, about the league’s latest scandal: Alexandre Burrows had accused referee Stephane Auger of having a vendetta against him after the Vancouver Canucks winger allegedly exaggerated the effects of a hit from Nashville Predator Jerred Smithson in a December 2009  game. When Auger officiated the Vancouver-Nashville rematch a month later, he gave Burrows a pre-game warning about embarrassing him, then handed the player three dubious penalties. The Canucks cried conspiracy.

Calling Campbell “Collie,” MacLean mocked Burrows while showing a clip of the hit: “We all thought he was dead.” The host broke down the footage of the player surreptitiously scoping out the refs and dragging out his recovery time—a tactic MacLean, a retired amateur referee, claimed was indicative of someone trying to draw a larger penalty. He then ran a series of clips of Burrows skirting the rules and getting away with dirty plays in the past. “Your sins will sort you out,” he pronounced. “Burrows has clearly made his bed.”

His unconcealed contempt aside, MacLean made a compelling case. But what could have been a measured takedown of both a dodgy player and a biased ref—a far worse problem for a sports league—degenerated into an ad hominem attack. MacLean didn’t give Burrows a chance to defend himself and later scoffed at the notion of a ref with an agenda, limiting his criticisms of the league to its ineffectual handling of habitual trouble-makers. Among his colleagues, MacLean (who did not return requests seeking comment) has a reputation as a guy who doesn’t pull punches. But that night, up against an NHL official, he seemed content to carry water.

Canada’s hockey broadcasts—HNIC, Rogers Sportsnet’s Hockeycentral and NHL on TSN—rely on business partnerships with the league. As reported by William Houston, then a sports media reporter for The Globe and Mail and now editor of truthandrumours.net, CTVglobemedia pays $35 to $40 million annually to air about 70 games and several playoff rounds on TSN, while CBC forks over $100 million per season for its marquee games on Saturday night and exclusive rights to the Stanley Cup final. Critics say these deals present a conflict of interest and undermine the networks’ motivations to do investigative journalism that could sully the reputation of the league—and their shows. “Anyone looking to a hockey broadcast for journalism,” says Toronto Star sports media columnist Chris Zelkovich, “is looking in the wrong place.”

But TSN, which launched in 1984, tries to tailor its coverage to the hardcore fan with strong and unsentimental reporting and analysis. In August 2009, Darren Dreger was following the upheaval in the NHLPlayers’ Association (NHLPA). On Friday, August 28, he predicted on-air that executive director Paul Kelly’s future was in peril. Leadership has long been controversial in the NHLPA. Founding executive director Alan Eagleson served time for fraud, and players accused Kelly’s predecessor, Ted Saskin, of spying on their e-mails. Given this history, senior producer Ken Volden granted Dreger’s request to cover the union’s meetings in Chicago. Two days later, he was the lone journalist at the Drake Hotel when the executive board fired Kelly at 3:30 a.m. Dreger won’t make assumptions about why no other network covered the meetings, but says, “I can assure you, if most had a do-over, they would do it differently.”

Faced with the challenge of covering a game so deeply rooted in the Canadian identity—combined with overbearing sponsors and a league that can be thin-skinned and arrogant—it’s easy to opt for deference and to let uncomfortable stories slide. But NHL on TSN suggests televised hockey-talk can still be principled, trustworthy and undeterred by the inertia of tradition.

* * *

For CBC, the game’s steadfast protector, hockey is ritual. Nostalgia-heavy broadcasts are an effective draw, though: HNIC regularly places in the top 20 in Canada’s BBM Nielsen ratings. Not that the show has no journalistic spine: Scott Morrison, a one-time Toronto Sun sports editor and Sportsnet’s former managing editor of hockey, co-hosts the “iDesk” segment with Jeff Marek, while Pierre LeBrun, a respected writer for espn.com, often appears on “The Hotstove” panel discussion. And Elliotte Friedman roams the sidelines conducting interviews and contributing features to the pre-game show Inside Hockey. Still, Friedman acknowledges the duality of his role. “It can’t be hard-core journalism all the time,” he says. “I still take it pretty seriously, but I realize part of making a broadcast successful is making it entertaining.”

That’s why “The Hotstove” also features loudmouth Mike Milbury, a former player, coach and general manager whose role is to react to LeBrun and the other panelists with contrarian bombast. That’s also why “Coach’s Corner”—a platform for Don Cherry to praise the troops, junior hockey and tough guys, and to heap scorn on those who dodge fights, wear visors or are European—remains the show’s spiritual centrepiece.

Although the talking heads may occasionally hold the league accountable, there’s a difference between debate about the news and the reporting that breaks it. Coordinating producer Brian Spear calls HNIC a “family show,” noting many Canadians watch one game a week—his. As TSN’s vice-president of production, Mark Milliere says, “Your grandmother’s watching it while she’s making soup on Saturday nights.” Even Mellanby’s wife “won’t watch the game, but she’ll watch Don Cherry.” Hockey fans may tune in to HNIC for the hockey, but the average Canadian watches out of habit.

* * *

Sportsnet’s role in the mosaic is less defined. Since its launch in 1998, the network’s personality has vacillated as its personnel has turned over. When Morrison arrived in 2001, he wanted to build a journalistically sound hockey department, with a staff that included Darren Dreger as Hockeycentral host. But that philosophy changed in 2006 when Sportsnet decided to go after what Morrison calls “the elusive 18-to-whatever audience,” discarding the standards he felt his team had successfully established.

Morrison and Dreger left, but Nick Kypreos stayed. Last fall, the former NHL tough guy scored an exclusive sit-down with Mike Danton, who’d just served five years in prison for conspiracy to commit murder. Most people believed his agent, David Frost, was the target when he’d tried to hire a hitman. (Frost’s long relationship with the player struck most people as harmful and exploitive.) But now, out of prison, Danton claimed he actually wanted to kill his allegedly abusive father, Steve Jefferson. The November interview was a huge get—a high-profile, national event for a network that specializes in regional broadcasts.

When Danton claimed he’d wanted his father dead, Kypreos ignored the substantial evidence to the contrary. “Rogue Agent,” one of Bob McKeown’s three documentaries on the story for CBC’s the fifth estate, featured multiple phone calls in which Danton tried to hire two different men—including a dispatcher for the local St. Louis police—to “take care of” Frost. Officers later arrested the player at San Jose International Airport. While awaiting indictment in a California jail, he crawled back to Frost. Later in the documentary, McKeown played a call in which the nervous agent advised the player on the coming legal proceedings, instructing him to blame his parents. Frost then asked if he still had to worry about his own safety.

Now walking free, Danton told a wildly different story. But Kypreos didn’t challenge this alternate history—he legitimized it. Over the hour, Danton spoke at length, explaining his bad behaviour, downplaying his relationship with Frost and offering appropriate contrition. By the time Kypreos asked what “prison was like for a guy that knows nothing but hockey,” it was obvious this wasn’t a fifth estate-style exposé. This was the first stop of the Mike Danton Soft-Focus Redemption Tour, sponsored by Sportsnet, with your host, Nick Kypreos.

Although the show drew an impressive 189,000 viewers, the reviews were predominantly negative. Globesports media columnist Bruce Dowbiggin said Kypreos seemed “unwilling to judge his subject” and that this approach “postpones the inevitable date with reality.” Friedman, who’s careful not to denounce his friend, admits there were elements of the interview he didn’t believe and wondered how thoroughly his colleague had prepared. Houston was blunt: The reluctance to push Danton to answer any tough questions “made the exercise a failure.”

In a statement on sportsnet.ca, Kypreos admitted he could have been more thorough and tenacious, but didn’t want to risk “Danton getting up and leaving with so many storylines still untold.” Considering the Rogers stable also boasts veteran reporter Mike Brophy and radio host Bob McCown, revered by one peer as the “greatest shit-disturber in Canadian sports media,” Kypreos’s botched effort was just another squandered opportunity for the network.

* * *

Steve Dryden, TSN’s managing editor of hockey, gets a little sheepish when he talks about his binders.

His office in the CTV complex in suburban Toronto is unremarkable, except for a signed photo of Bobby Orr and Eric Lindros on the ice together. The bookshelf to his left is stocked with hockey reference materials, scouting reports and record books dating from the 1970s; below those are colour-coded binders. Smirking, Dryden explains the red binders contain handwritten box scores for every NHL game since the early 2000s, while the others are packed with pertinent stats—blocked shots, breakaways, fights and turnovers, all of which he diligently compiles. The former editor-in-chief of The Hockey News has been doing this since he covered the OHL’s Cornwall Royals for the Cornwall Standard Freeholder in the 1980s. The records help him keep track of trends and storylines, and serve as a physical memory bank when he sends producers into the archives to put together clip packages. He considers it an “old school” approach rather than an obsessive one—a throwback to a newspaper sensibility.

On Dryden’s desk is a replica of a crude early-model goalie mask. It’s there for a segment on Jacques Plante, the first goalie to regularly wear one 50 years ago. TSN commemorated the milestone with a piece that explored the birth of the mask from the perspective of Andy Bathgate, whose shot was the last to hit Plante before the goalie insisted on wearing his mask in games. NHL on TSN host James Duthie introduced the segment with an under-reported side of the story: the shot, Bathgate admitted on air, was intentional. A few games earlier, the Canadiens’ goalie delivered a dangerous poke-check that sent the New York Ranger headfirst into the boards. When Bathgate got the chance to retaliate with a wrist shot into the netminder’s cheek, he took it. Rather than rehash the oft-told Plante story with the pablum of the goalie mask’s evolution, Duthie found a lesser-known, more substantial angle.

The studio component of NHL on TSN supports the program’s role as what Milliere calls “the show of record” for hockey in Canada. The team includes Bob McKenzie, another editor emeritus of The Hockey News, and Dreger, the show’s “insiders.” Even Duthie is a journalism school graduate who started in news. Though they too admit entertainment is a large part of the job—“You’d be naive to say it’s not the number one goal,” Duthie says—they keep the analytical elements accessible and dignified, complemented by daily reporting. The result is an editorial mix that blends the breaking news of trades, transactions and injuries with reflections on issues facing the league and the occasional investigative report.

On October 29, 2009, the broadcast day begins when the Ottawa Senators and Tampa Bay Lightning arrive at the St. Pete Times Forum for their morning skate. The play-by-play announcers, colour commentators and producers speak with players and coaches. They’ll develop five to 10 stories (including who’s injured, who’s playing well and who’s changing lines) that will be further refined as the broadcast approaches. “It’s preparation meets opportunity,” says Milliere. “Every match-up is a play in three acts, and every night there’s a story to be told.”

But these stories can often seem like fictions. He offers the hypothetical example of an early season game when Maple Leaf goalies Vesa Toskala and Jonas Gustavsson were in competition for the starting job. The show’s opening teases the rivalry with footage of each man at practice. When Gustavsson makes a spectacular save during the game, a camera cuts to Toskala on the bench, lingering long enough on his blank expression to cast doubt on whether he’s happy for his teammate or upset his job is on the line. With a cut to Toronto coach Ron Wilson looking pleased, the dramatic elements of the story, real or not, begin to emerge.

This is storytelling, absolutely—an important component of journalism, and more entertaining than, say, a dry recitation of statistics—but given the banality of the typical athlete interview, there’s little reason to believe the truth is nearly as exciting as this series of jump-cuts makes it seem.

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Both TSN and CBC deny their sponsors or the league carry any editorial weight. “Push-back is not common,” Dryden says. “They understand that that’s the job. We’re constantly raising issues, big or small.” He notes that TSN found instances of goals scored after the puck bounced off the protective netting above the boards. Officials had been missing it, counting goals when the play should have been called dead, and NHL on TSNaired the evidence. “The NHL didn’t want us shining a light on that,” he says.

But the league has bigger problems. Head injuries have been impossible to ignore since Don Sanderson, a 21-year-old minor league hockey player, fell into a coma and died after hitting his head on the ice during a December 12, 2008 fight. Through the end of last October, the NHL claimed only 10 players had suffered concussions in exhibition games and the first month of the season. But TSN conducted its own survey of all 30 teams and found that 26 players had missed games with concussions or related symptoms. “I don’t know what their threshold is,” Dryden says of the league’s head injury policy. “Apparently, it’s bigger than ours.”

Still, autonomy from the powers that be isn’t always a given. McKeown says that during production of one of his Danton docs, he asked CBC Sports for footage, but his timing was lousy; CBC was negotiating rights with the NHL and there was rampant speculation that the network might lose its broadcasting rights altogether.CBC Sports denied him access to any Danton footage and he ended up using clips from a Fox Sports affiliate in Missouri. Joel Darling, then the executive producer of HNIC, says he doesn’t remember the incident, but points out, “There are rights issues everybody has to deal with.”

McKeown’s not bitter—he happily acknowledges the value of HNIC—and maybe he should have expectedCBC to be risk-averse. Dave Hodge, now an NHL on TSN commentator, was similarly stymied. He preceded MacLean as HNIC host and, after Philadelphia Flyers goalie Pelle Lindbergh died in a 1985 alcohol-related accident, wanted to do a feature on drunk driving. He worried it was too common around the league, and hoped to include HNIC’s sponsor, Molson, in the segment. CBC killed the feature without explanation. Hodge won’t speculate about what happened—he just chuckles and says he no longer pays any attention to sponsors.

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Because they must live in what McKenzie calls a “state of perpetual awareness,” he and other hockey reporters don’t have a formal preparation period. “You don’t cram before going on television,” he says, en route to shoot a segment for TSN’s Off the Record as a last-minute fill-in.

The game day routine is similar for everyone at NHL on TSN: Read sports on the internet for a few hours, have a conference call with Dryden at 10 a.m., maybe do a radio appearance, then call up sources or catch up on game footage before a 5 or 5:30 p.m. meeting in Dryden’s office, where all the stories and segments go up on the white board. At the October 29 meeting, Duthie’s BlackBerry buzzes. He reads the message aloud. “Did you see this? Cogliano dressed up as Dany Heatley for the Oilers’ Halloween party.”

Everyone in the room laughs. Over the summer, rumours suggested Heatley, then with the Ottawa Senators, would be traded to Edmonton, against his wishes, for Andrew Cogliano and two other players. Dryden adds “Cogliano” to the board and moves on, but Duthie occasionally pipes up with more information until there’s a complete picture: “All Ottawa gear—bag, hat, gloves, visor, no teeth.”

The updates came from Cogliano. “I have relationships with a couple hundred players,” Duthie says, “but I tell them it doesn’t mean I’m going to coddle them. If there’s something to criticize about them, I will.” Still, he admits there are secrets he keeps—secrets that would surely be stories. “But that’s how you foster a relationship with someone to gain trust. Sometimes you don’t repeat what you know. That’s just all part of the process.”

For McKeown, this can both help and hinder coverage of sports—or Parliament Hill. “You get to know the individuals on a personal basis,” he says, “and it takes you away from the arm’s-length objectivity journalism is supposed to have.” Paul Romanuk, a former tsn play-by-play announcer, is more direct: “Journalism is what a newspaper writer does, perhaps a reporter at a TV station, but not a live sports broadcast. Anyone who tells you otherwise is kidding himself.” He qualifies that statement a moment later: “I’m not saying broadcasters aren’t critical of the product, but never confuse it with hardcore journalism, because it simply is not.”

An example of a story he doesn’t believe a rights-holder would break is the 1986 Sports Illustrated feature that exposed the wild partying of the Edmonton Oilers—to Romanuk, a piece of “real” journalism.

When McKenzie was editor at The Hockey News, though, that paper picked up on the story. Even today, he insists he and his colleagues wouldn’t hesitate to break it. He knows NHL on TSN isn’t all hard news, “but is a newspaper all hard news?” he asks. “No, it’s not. And yet, people might not ask whether a newspaper is journalism—they’d just say, ‘Of course it is.’ The vehicle doesn’t really matter.”

But this is Canada—hockey does matter, and the networks that broadcast the NHL have a choice: commit to journalism or bask in the game’s glory. For Friedman, Morrison and others who work on HNIC, being part of the program is an honour. The show, however, is an institution often interchangeable with hockey itself in the annals of Canadiana. The journalistic pedigrees of its staff are legitimate, but the broadcast is the sport’s standard-bearer.

NHL on TSN isn’t hamstrung by history, and without a rigid format, it can make room for stories others might miss. Critics may dismiss the job as easy—this is just sports, after all. The reporters work hard, sure, and there are stories worth chasing, but the stakes are undeniably lower than covering politics or finance. That’s not lost on the TSN crew. “The guys always show up at the same time at the arena,” jokes Duthie. “They skate around for an hour and you ask them dumb questions afterwards.” Some reporters more effectively than others.