I was just the right age (grade school! junior high!) and persuasion (all sports! all the time!) for Hodge to be my Cronkite: you got your two televised Leafs games per week, sure, but everything revolved around HNIC and Saturday night.
And before stagey personalities overtook actual broadcasting acumen, he was the gatekeeper of an all-business, authoritative program. That level gaze, even voice and helmet hair bespoke calm and control: as VanIslander says upthread, Hodge ruled that portal, and when it all came crashing down during the Habs-Flyers game, the fallout was stunning. I remember that broadcast, the Monday morning Toronto Star and Globe And Mail columns, MacLean almost apologetically taking the desk next weekend, and later on, Dave popping up on the downmarket midweek Leafs games on Global. I’ve always felt sorry for him, even as he forged ahead finding decent work.
Tonight, as his voice thickened a couple times with MacLean, you realized that the brand, the jacket, the forum still mattered to him. So that felt wonderful to me, then, too.
I watched Dick Irvin with a silly grin on my face when he stopped by last winter, but that’s different. Just an old master popping by for a little visit. This meant more. I hope Hodge appears again and again. But for the time being, we have those few seconds at the end of tonight’s piece: when Ron, a wise old owl when he wants to be, gave Dave the chance to throw to the ad break. I think I rewound that part three times. And I never watched a second of the actual game. Fancy that.