Legendary Hockey Announcer Talks Hot-Mic Moment He Thought Would Get Him Fired
Whew,that was close one...
Hot-mic moments have been the talk of the NHL after Philadelphia Flyers radio play-by-play announcer Tim Saunders got caught making a joke with the boys on air last week.
Saunders is expected to return to the booth on Tuesday night when the Flyers take on the Chicago Blackhawks, and now another NHL broadcasting great — the voice of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Joe Bowen — is talking about a hot-mic moment he thought was going to cost him his job.
The veteran broadcaster with decades behind the mic was a guest on the Spittin' Chiclets podcast when co-host and ex-NHLer Paul Bissonnette referenced Saunders' suspension and asked if Bowen ever had any moments like that.
Sure enough, Bowen said he had… even if it wasn't quite as risque as the joke that earned Saunders a time-out.
"Bill Waters did color with me for a number of years, and, Wilbur, at the time, was the biggest player agent in the National Hockey League," Bowen said. "Talk about a conflict of interest, but he was great."
Bowen said that one night in Boston, while the Leafs were closing in on the "Wendel Clark Draft," Toronto was getting crushed and down 6-0 in the second period.
Legendary Toronto Maple Leafs broadcaster Joe Bowen talked about a hot-mic moment he thought was going to get him fired. (Photo by Kevin Sousa/NHLI via Getty Images)
"We go to a commercial break, and the engineer that I have, the guy helping us, is the most disinterested human being in the world," Bowen recalled. "He's sitting there reading The New York Times and whatnot. He couldn't care less about the thing. Anyway, he doesn't pot us down."
Now, that's radio speak for the "engineer or someone back at the station didn't turn down the volume when we were supposed to be in a break. Bowen said he suspected this was exactly what happened to Saunders.
"Anyway, Wilbur says we had a couple three Czechoslovakians on the team and (Watters) said, "(If) we don't get rid of these three blankety-blank Czechs, we're going nowhere.' And I just kind of went, 'Yeah, probably. I don't know.'"
Bowen said after the game, he received a call from his assistant asking if he knew what had been said on air. He said he didn't, and the agent repeated it.
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"I thought, 'Oh, we're done. We're absolutely done here. We're done,'" Bowen said. "We come back home, we fly home, we get back home, nothing. Day, next day, nothing. Next game, we go to the rink, nothing.
"And I turned to Wilbur, and I said, ‘You know what, Wilbur? With (the Leafs losing) 6-0, one of two things happened here. Either no one was listening, or everyone went, ’You're damn right there.'"
It's a great story, and Bowen's probably right about the second part.
The Leafs finished dead-last in the league and drafted Clark, who went on to play 13 seasons in Toronto.
Fortunately for Bowen and Leafs fans, he kept his gig and will retire at the end of this season after 44 years behind the mic.