On a crisp autumn afternoon in 2016, Joe Bowen reclined in a comfortable chair in his warm suburban basement to consider a hypothetical question. As the long-time radio play-by-play voice for the Maple Leafs, how would he describe the first moments of a Stanley Cup championship?
He had no answer.
“Simply because I won’t rehearse it,” he said. “I think, if you do, it’s going to sound just like that.”
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What was left unsaid in that scenario — because it was assumed — was that Bowen would be physically inside the arena when he made that long-awaited call. Today, as the Leafs prepare to embark on another playoff attempt, that probability seems much lower.
Bowen and his long-time colour analyst, Jim Ralph, will not join the team on the road when it travels during the opening round of the NHL playoffs. It is not clear whether the broadcasters would be put back on the road if the Leafs were to win a series for the first time since 2004.
In separate email responses to The Athletic on Thursday, spokespeople from Sportsnet and TSN issued identical one-sentence messages: “Our radio broadcast plans for the playoffs will be consistent with the regular season, with games being called remotely through Round 1.”
An email request to Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment was not immediately returned.
Bowen and Ralph have been grounded in Toronto for three seasons, and did not travel with the team for its first-round playoff series last year. When the Leafs have a home game, they work from their familiar perch high above the ice at Scotiabank Arena.
When the team is away, they call the play from television monitors inside Sportsnet or TSN, depending on which radio station has the game that night.
“It may be a new normal in some markets, but it isn’t normal,” said Nelson Millman, a retired program director at Sportsnet 590 The Fan. “And honestly, it’s not right.”
He estimated the cost of sending a crew to Tampa for a series would be around $10,000, which was not a “prohibitive” price for either radio station. Sportsnet is owned by Rogers Communications Inc., while TSN 1050 is owned by Bell, Canada’s other telecommunications giant.
“Can you imagine if Tom (Cheek) and Jerry (Howarth) had been sitting in Toronto doing the ’92 World Series from Atlanta?” Millman said with a laugh. “I’ve been out of the business for a long time, and I still get frustrated by it. … Beyond the money, I don’t understand the decision.”
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When he oversaw operations at The Fan, Millman said a Leafs playoff run would generate content to carry the station “24/7,” and that having the play-by-play voice and colour analyst on-site allowed for guest appearances across multiple shows through the day.
“When the Leafs go to the playoffs, or the Jays go to the playoffs — or any home team goes to the playoffs — the fans can’t see enough, read enough or hear enough,” he said. “That’s what happens as momentum builds.”
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Calling games remotely, sometimes known as “off tube,” is an old concept that became more widely used during the pandemic, when restrictions limited travel. There were health and safety concerns, as well as issues hopscotching international borders.
It was also, notably, a cost savings for the broadcasters.
The trend has persisted in Toronto, and not only with coverage of the Maple Leafs. Sportsnet has also kept Blue Jays radio play-by-play voice Ben Wagner at home when the team is on the road, leading to an awkward stretch of 10 minutes during a game earlier this month.
A report in The Canadian Press highlighted a fire alarm that sounded during a game with the St. Louis Cardinals. A Sportsnet spokesperson confirmed to the wire service that alarm was sounding inside the studio, but said, “it was a false alarm — all is OK.”
Bowen and Ralph have also encountered glitches while working from studio. One night, with the Leafs in Florida, the tandem briefly lost video access to the game. At one point, their only available feed was switched to a soccer game.
Generally, listeners would struggle to guess where the announcers were working. Noise from the arena is spliced into their call, making it sound like they are on-site, even if they can still see the CN Tower during a game in Tampa, Los Angeles or Boston.
“After 40 years of doing Toronto Maple Leaf hockey games, if they finally get to the big prize, it’s going to be very disappointing if we’re stuck in a studio back at home when the trophy is paraded out,” Bowen said in an interview last spring. “But we will do the best that we can under the circumstances.”
Interview requests from The Athletic for Greg Sansone, the new senior executive at Sportsnet, have been declined. (It is a challenging time in the terrestrial radio industry, with Ford Canada confirming its vehicles will soon begin rolling off the assembly line without access to AM radio.)
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Millman said he believed that if the Leafs found a way to advance past the Lightning, the radio stations would reconsider their stance and send their crew on the road for the second round.
“I would hope you see that changed,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense for the first round. It really doesn’t make sense for the second round. If they happen to make it to the conference finals, I don’t know how you can not have them in place.”
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(The Athletic file photo of Jim Ralph and Joe Bowen from 2019 courtesy Joe Bowen)