Mortimer, I adore your love letter to professional journalism. My dad was and is a sportswriter (mostly retired now) and growing up I got to meet and know a bunch of his colleagues and friends from work. When he was working at the Sun (and he worked basically everywhere at one point or another) he even got me a non-sports job at the paper that got me into the newsroom from time to time. One of my proudest achievements is one year I got into the sports department hockey pool and I didn't finish last.
However, if you're lucky sportswriters went to some form of journalism school, where they are taught about writing. What they are never taught about are the sports themselves. Sure, most of them learn a thing or two by hanging out at the rink or ballfield every day, but never take a sports journalist as any kind of expert on the particular sport.
So what does that mean for Westwood? He's only able to give inside information when talking about the CFL, not hockey. But he isn't any less qualified to talk hockey than anyone else. But yes - generally I would prefer to hear from experienced broadcasters. They may not have anything more to say than anyone else, but at least they're easier to listen to.
I have a bit of a similar history. I think you are both right and wrong about sports writers expertise. They might not know how to get around a Dman one on one or how to win a face-off but they did have a lot of expertise on the bigger picture and also a lot of colourful inside stuff about players, coaches and teams.
The best of them would dig into the stories, as true journalists. So, even though they lacked the hands on knowledge of the games' intricacies they could be very informative to the fans.
I think the media generally had a good balance when they began bringing in the jocks as colour men, alongside the professional sports broadcasters. Unfortunately, IMO they kept going in that direction, replacing most of the journalists with jocks. Not entirely, but too far.
To Westwood's credit, I think he at least tries to learn about sports other than football. I don't listen to him (or 1290) much but he seems to be trying to become a real sports broadcaster. Not just an ex-player colour guy.
Now to blow my whole theme out of the water we have Toth and Kevin O.
Supposedly professional sports broadcasters. The problem is just that they aren't very good.