OK David, you win on the travel front; I did get to San Jose just before midnight Pacific Time (or 3 a.m. body time, as Badger Bob Johnson used to say) for a 15-hour and 15-minute travel day station to station and my luggage did arrive intact. There were other issues with the second half of my flight in from Detroit, but if I get into them, I'll just get mad all over again.
Besides, I was thinking of you and your famous story of interviewing Dave Schultz, the ex-Flyers' goon, this morning. As I recall, your opening, as you stuck your hand out and introduced yourself was: 'Dave Schultz? Dave Shoalts' - and we all got to enjoy the puzzled look on the latter's face. I mention this only because a noteworthy absence from the HP Pavilion today was another former NHL tough guy, Marty McSorley, the San Jose Sharks' color man, who apparently isn't available to work tonight's game against the Detroit Red Wings for what the team describes as personal reasons. As a result of McSorley's absence, the Sharks brought back Drew Remenda, their former analyst, to work with Randy Hahn, his long-time play-by-play partner, for tonight's telecast of the third game of the Red Wings-Sharks' series on FSN Bay Area.
McSorley replaced Remenda as the team's color man ast the start of the season and by all accounts, did a credible job. If anything, he was perhaps a little too candid for his employers' taste. Officially, McSorley was attending to personal business - he still has a home in southern California - and couldn't make it back to San Jose to do these last few games.
FSN can only telecast a maximum of three more games anyway - it only gets to do games not shown on NBC or Versus. So that would leave them with tonight's game, plus the sixth and seventh games of the Sharks-Red Wings' series, if necessary.
Remenda, meanwhile, moved back to Canada from the Bay Area following last season and has worked mostly as a color commentator for Hockey Night In Canada's late game this season. He was available because CBC was down to two broadcast crews in the second round, after the Calgary Flames - the only other Canadian team to qualify for the playoffs - were eliminated in the first round.
Conspiracy theorists in the Bay Area wondered if McSorley's absence had anything to do with the presence of the Red Wings as the Sharks' second-round opponent, but there was no actual evidence to support that contention. Earlier in the season, McSorley was critical of Red Wings' coach Mike Babcock on a broadcast, citing as his source an unidentified player in the Detroit dressing room. I was actually watching the broadcast on my satellite dish that night and remember thinking, it was a pretty strong statement by Marty - far bolder than the commentary you normally associate with these in-house sorts of broadcasts, where they tend to tread carefully around anything remotely interesting or controversial. I didn't think much more about it until the next day, when I was doing an NHL radio network interview and the hosts had noted McSorley's words as well and asked for my take on it. Sadly, that's always going to the struggle associated with being part of the home-team network - trying to balance journalistic credibility with the larger goal of promoting the game and more importantly, selling tickets to the next one.