As the Vancouver Canucks and their fans at home and around the world gear up for playoff hockey, they’ll be welcomed to the road to the Stanley Cup by a familiar, trusted voice.
Sportsnet has announced the legendary John Shorthouse, along with Dave Tomlinson and Dan Murphy, will be calling the games for the TV broadcasts.
Despite an illustrious career, this is the first time Shorty, as he’s known, will be calling a Canucks playoff game on TV. He says he can’t wait.
“You mean, as a kid that grew up in Kerrisdale and wants nothing more than for the Vancouver Canucks to win a Stanley Cup? A kid who grew up with a transistor radio under his pillow so he could listen to Jim Robson and Tom Larscheid past his bedtime? It’s huge. It’s great,” he told Sportsnet 650 Friday.
Shorthouse says he’s called 105 playoff games to date, but never on a TV broadcast.
“It’s a step in my career and it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Putting himself aside, Shorthouse says this a big moment for a lot of people who’ve never witnessed a Canucks home playoff game or can’t remember where they were the last time they made it to the playoffs nine years ago.
“I can relate to this through my own kids. My son hasn’t seen a playoff series in Vancouver where they actually played a game in Vancouver with fans in attendance and all that. Forget that he hasn’t seen a Canucks playoff game like that since he was 11 and he’s now wrapping up second-year university,” explained Shorthouse.
“He doesn’t really remember that 2015 series all that much. He remembers crying after [the Canucks] blew Game 6, but that’s about it. For fans who are maybe going to go to their first-ever playoff game in person — those first 10 minutes of Game 1, you’re going to be like, ‘Wow. There’s this gear?’”
Shorthouse expects the match-up to be intensely physical between the Canucks and Nashville Predators.
“There’s going to be such an electricity in the building because it is just a completely different beast when you get to playing games at this time of year,” he explained.
“I remember some of the years when the Canucks were so good from 2009 through 2012 and 2013, and the first few minutes of those opening games of the playoffs it was just so intense as both teams try to set the tone and you realize that there are so many levels that the game can get ratcheted up to.”
He thinks former NHLer Tomlinson might be part of the good luck charm the Canucks need to make a deep run.
“People are very fond of the theory of jinxes and jinxing things with words that are used or this, that, and the other thing. Well, how about a reverse jinx? The Canucks hockey equivalent to a rabbit’s foot.
“Dave Tomlinson took over the radio colour (commentator) chair in October of 2010, as he replaced the retiring Tom Larscheid. And in his first year working with me on the radio mic, the Canucks went to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. And here he is, taking over this year in the television colour chair, replacing the retiring John Garrett and I think we can all agree it was nowhere the Canucks put up 109 points and win the division.”
If you miss the TV broadcasts, you can listen to every Canucks playoff game, including pre- and post-game coverage, on Sportsnet 650.