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00:01should i wait you're gonna make me wait i'm gonna leave
00:05i'm gonna walk out all right i'll wait it's fine we're a team our first guest today made
00:12regular appearances on this show more than 20 years ago but then he got smart
00:18ron mcclain it is such a delight to have you back on after all these years uh how's life
00:24it's good mike and bulldog and i'll tell you one thing if you've got a fantasy
00:28update that you need to get out to you go ahead but i'll tell you david amber's in the building
00:32tonight and da as we call him is kind of a for hockey poolsters good luck because he was in
00:38denver for his one and only appearance the crazy game with 15 goals game one and the last time there
00:44were 15 goals in a playoff game was edmonton calgary and he was in the building hosting that one so
00:49i have a feeling we might see a few goals tonight with david and elliott friedman's been dispatched
00:53and chris cuthbert craig simpson kyle vikaskis we've got the whole army down there we had a
00:58pretty little 15 goal game here not that long ago uh in march sabers eight lightning seven
01:05and that's just sort of maybe one mile post along the way to this incredible story
01:13the sabers have been this year we've asked so many of our favorite hockey guests who in your case as
01:21well
01:21i mean we go back a long time since we've spoken even ej raddick and other people just to find
01:26out
01:27how surprised they are that this happened this year where would you put yourself on that scale
01:34well i'm just so proud of lindy ruff and i and i might have been in that church that thought
01:38you
01:39know it's passed a few of these guys by joe quenville and john tortorella and rick bonus and
01:44the list goes on it's just amazing how guys with all that wisdom you know you remembered after lindy
01:50left buffalo jim nil kind of surprised us he took over dallas for joe newendyke and his first hire
01:55was lindy ruff and lindy was a part of the florida run in 96 and he's just i'm from alberta
02:00he's from
02:01alberta and i should never doubt lindy but you know it was by mid-season obviously with the change
02:06at management level uh you wondered and and he just found a way to to bring out the i give
02:12all the
02:13credit to dolly and the players of course rasmus's story is otherworldly so it's a surprise and it's a
02:19it's a really nice surprise or a joy to watch uh you know what the vibe will be like this
02:23evening
02:24it's good that it's montreal coming in for round two so yeah the world is good and i i it
02:29is a
02:29surprise yeah it's so good ron that it's it's turned for lindy i mean when he got the job a
02:35couple
02:35summers ago things were so bad here my my most prominent thought about him coming back was i don't
02:43want like the stench of the organization right now to get on him like he's he's fondly remembered
02:49even revered here for his time as a player and a coach the first time around and man for a
02:56season
02:56and a couple of months it seemed like maybe that was happening there were rumblings when when the
03:02the news started to leak out about adams getting uh replaced that lindy might get bumped upstairs or
03:08something and i mean thank god none of that happened because now they've got a super experienced
03:14you know stanley cup finals not winning coach behind the bench with a with a pretty unproven team
03:20and it's it seems like a really good fit now and he's you know a perfect guy because uh 79
03:26he was
03:26drafted i think by buffalo he was a forward and a defenseman so he he can talk to either end
03:32of the
03:32bench he's a captain he took over for gill perot you know so he he's done it all and and
03:38that
03:38calm uh you know he can get excited like joel quenville quenville's more excitable but lindy
03:44can crank it up a notch as well and yeah i think for a for it's always important to have
03:50somebody
03:50that takes the attention i remember when pk suban was in montreal you know he he took all the media
03:56glare it allowed carrie price to just do his thing and lindy's got a calm way of being uh there
04:03for the
04:03media but i think it's just so important and he's he's done just a wonderful job now
04:08you know when i go back to the 99 run and i think about what he had there this team
04:12reminds me a
04:13little bit of that i mean tage thompson one of the highlights of the year had to be when dan
04:17dunleavy
04:18was calling those five one-timers remember the power play and it's it's like the old joke where
04:23the manager goes out to the mound to tell the pitcher he's coming out and the pitcher says why i'm
04:27not
04:27tired you know what your outfielders are i think rasmus dollin was weary of feathering passes over to
04:33tage thompson but you know that that team had uh shatan was the 40 goal guy in 99 they were
04:39they
04:40were a little bit like buffalo they just seemed to have a spirit about them a blue collar work ethic
04:46that was fabulous and uh you know peck has shut down medano you didn't see a no goals out of
04:51mike
04:51medano in that stanley cup final run so they seem to have a lot of the same thing going on
04:56with ron
04:57mclean of course we had oh six and oh seven where the sabers really threatened i mean they won a
05:01president's trophy and had a look at a at a first cup but you mentioned david amber and your
05:08colleagues being in the building tonight i think of 99 98 and 99 in fact one thing i think of
05:15is
05:15yourself and don and everybody being here and cbc just like with the leafs and the conference finals
05:21and all that do the crowds i mean you know buffalo and you know you've been around this market for
05:28decades so i'm sure it comes as no surprise but i feel like a lot of sabers fans are are
05:34tapping back
05:34into the late 90s even oh six uh and even possibly earlier years than that with what an incredible
05:41scene this is when it's you know when it's going when it's cooking well one of the things i remember
05:47is in 1975 when bernie perron and the philadelphia flyers won it they won it in buffalo game six
05:52perron had a two-nothing shutout and at the end of the game the fans were all chanting bernie bernie
05:57it was a and it wasn't like a derision they were actually saluting perron on a unbelievable
06:03performance and as you know a lot of the fans trickle over the border so half the guys i play
06:08wednesday night beer league hockey with go to the games in buffalo they have season seats uh there's a
06:13we we were thinking you know last sunday afternoon we were sitting here thinking good god if montreal
06:17loses in tampa tonight you know no canadian teams we're going to adopt buffalo right away
06:23so they will be our story and yeah that that tradition from the french connection and their
06:29connection to the montreal canadians uh right on through through the years whether it was teddy
06:34nolan uh whether it was the lunch pail uh you know which was grapes's approach in boston and certainly
06:39was uh rob ray brad may's and buffalo's approach at buffalo it's a it's a it's a super spirit and
06:45there's uh the moncton wildcats of the quebec maritime junior hockey league just won a big game seven
06:50last night in their quebec semifinals so they'll face chicotomy in the final their their owner is a
06:55guy named robert irving he's big in uh oil and everything down in the maritimes of canada and he
07:00has a saying the best fertilizer a farmer can have is his own footprints on the land and that's why
07:06we
07:06have all these boots on the ground at buffalo that's going to make it a great show for hockey
07:10night for us what do you make of montreal's place in all of this obviously with with you know
07:16canada being behind them i would imagine um uh how about them their role in all of this from our
07:24standpoint ron well goaltending you know that they have been getting from dobich what ken dryden gave
07:30montreal excuse me in 1971 the last time a rookie canadian goaltender started on the road at game seven
07:36it was dryden in 1971 against boston of course and dobich went into tampa and beat vasilevsky so that
07:43was a huge story it's like the buffalo sabers when they won because we just had the lottery
07:47yesterday when they won the spin of the wheel and got jill perot that was big but almost as big
07:53was a trade that they made boston bruins couldn't protect tom webster in the expansion draft and the
08:01detroit red wings coveted tom webster so detroit came to punch him lack and said you draft tom webster
08:08off boston's unprotected list and then we will trade your roger crozier and that that was an
08:14enormous moment in buffalo sabers early history and montreal right now is loaded in net and and
08:20you know obviously buffalo has been able to play two goaltenders here but i i think that's what
08:25you're going to be dealing with is that tall lanky rookie goalie kind of shades of 71 ron one thing
08:31i
08:31think about when i reflect on our visits with you more than 20 years ago now there was a certain
08:38conversation where i was for some reason we were talking about the penguins um maybe it was the
08:44crosby lottery or something else that they had done and the sabers might have dipped a little bit and
08:50i might have put a question to you that was sort of like maybe i was a little bit jealous
08:54or
08:55anyway some some sort of context between the sabers history and the penguins history and you
08:59were like right there with oh my god it's not even close the appreciation you you know described
09:06for the history of the sabers and the buffalo hockey market i remember this was just like really
09:12powerful and um you know we're back right i mean two things have happened we have joel darling you know
09:19joel uh he's uh obviously from i don't know if he's lockport but he's that area and uh he's a
09:25key
09:26driver of our show at hockey night in canada he's responsible for all our special events and in
09:30particular that one we call hockey day in canada once a year we go somewhere this year was moncton
09:34last year was canmore and joel his dad obviously is ted and his uh children joel's children have been
09:41a big part of rogers hometown hockey and hockey night in canada shows that we do so i kind of
09:45by
09:46osmosis we live across the street from one another almost in oakville ontario we play at the same
09:50little nine hole golf course in oakville that's one thing the other thing that happened as you know
09:55uh joe crozier the late joe crozier who was kind of don's favorite coach don did play a little bit
10:01for punch but he played for joe crozier and he thought the world of joe and he learned a lot
10:06of
10:06how don cherry coached was based on how joe crozier coached in rochester joe invited me to come down
10:12one year to do four uh times on the jumbotron at the intermission i would go on the jumbotron and
10:18interview i remember like mid-season i had don come down and do it i said the sabers seem to
10:23have
10:23found their footing of course they found their footing how she was horseshit first half of the
10:27year and he said this right in front of the full crowd i'm sorry to swear but yeah we just
10:32had to
10:32leap around mcclain everybody that's right you're going to have volume you're going to have one more
10:37of those you're going to have volume won't be allowed on my own show tonight it's nice to be on
10:42yours anyway that i brought in doug favel brought in the teeter kennedy ted kennedy imagine who was uh
10:48in charge of security at fort erie racetrack and we would do those and then after the game or after
10:53that little show i would go over to mothers and we would all be together and i would hear i
10:58i can tell
10:59you conversations with danny gare uh obviously daryl shannon's a dear friend out of that uh he was
11:05incredible to talk hockey with and it's it's its own uh you know we have saskatchewan that's our version
11:13of what buffalo is to the national hockey we wish we had a team there in saskatchewan but they they
11:18have a football team uh regina rough riders that that are on par with the green bay's and the
11:24buffalo's as you know you just don't have magic without them i need one of these hockey days in
11:29canada to be like in oakville my daughter plays in st catherine's we're up there constantly she'll be in
11:35playing well i'd like it in buffalo we've often ditched the idea can can we same with rogers
11:40hometown hockey we wish that we could go when we did that show we tripes around canada for eight
11:45years we hit over 160 communities i never got to flin flan that was really high on the bucket list
11:50never got to rowan aranda that was ortois riviere those were the quebec stops we wished we had but
11:56definitely felt it would have been important to get into buffalo you know dick enberg grew up in
12:01detroit area and there's a huge history over there they call it hockey town buffalo there's an
12:07enormous history uh for us in western new york so it would be good to do the hockey day show
12:12and joel
12:12if anybody's going to make it happen it'll be joel well now we've just proven uh quintessentially that
12:18we know the anthem here yeah which was magic you know i'm glad you brought that up because there's
12:24there that was a magical moment the other day in carolina they had uh seth jarvis's friends from
12:30winnipeg did the hurricane siren before the game i i would include curvy doc after he booted around
12:37the first game in the tampa series was game two but he came home for game three at bell center
12:42and the
12:43crowd gave him a standing ovation as he hit the ice you know the people that there's more goodwill i
12:49know it can turn ugly and it should when when fans are upset but there is more goodwill comes from
12:54a
12:54gathering at a at a stadium and any church any school just anything you could it's just so
13:01incredible to see what what that moment met as we go through some tense times to see that you know
13:07canada u.s thing being so celebrated that was a great moment so ron ron bulldog and i are in
13:13there he
13:13bought tickets and invited me so we're down there seven rows behind the boston bench and before the
13:19star spangled banner is even like half over we're both getting like all these but you were just on
13:25sports net sports net sports net sports net like we're right there people picked us out yeah were
13:30you singing the right no no no well mike couldn't mike could barely talk i barely made it through the
13:35show his only show front of last week that he was there for he skipped monday and wednesday uh but
13:40wanted to be there tuesday like he said i got these tickets i'd never been to a serious clinching game
13:45so i really wanted to take the opportunity and ron honest to god i was standing there i'd only been
13:52to one other game this year and i might have missed the anthems and i'm standing there thinking when did
13:57we start doing this i didn't realize her mic had cut out i thought we were just doing the thing
14:01that
14:01the vancouver guy used to do or something and my my mind was spinning like i'm on the radio six
14:07days a
14:08week how do i not know we're singing the canadian anthem like this like i didn't know it was a
14:12new
14:12thing that just happened because of the technical difficulties so good so i never sang because i've
14:17never sung and i thought like i don't want to just jump on a bandwagon how did i miss that
14:21we do this
14:22now turns out we we don't we just did it then and probably forever more now i would expect we'll
14:28see
14:28tonight i'm expecting it to get belted out even though they're playing a canadian team yeah i remember
14:33glenn say there once cut the cord down in los angeles because gloria loring who was married to alan
14:38thick they were uh two great celebrities from canada and yeah he knew that that was uh kind of
14:44like the star spangled no uh god bless america i should say with kate smith was a thing back in
14:49the mid 70s so what did he do gloria loring days of our lives what did he do yes he
14:54went cut the cable
14:55glenn left the bench and snuck under the stairs at uh the old great western form in los angeles and
15:01cut
15:02the cable to her microphone just so she wouldn't be able to get the crowd going in los angeles
15:07but karma karma is you know they had the miracle on the oilers that's right not twice in 10 minutes
15:15ron there are 11s there are 11s happening here that's right well uh i mean this is just a great
15:22thrill um even that you mentioned enberg who i put like right there with you on the list he was
15:27on our
15:27show once and he was broadcasting for the padres at the time they were in milwaukee and our producer
15:33goddess dick enberg and bulldog remember this like he was sort of 10 minutes into his like um
15:38bad news i gotta go the bus is leaving the bus so i mean i had to believe him i
15:43had to accept that
15:44but at least we had 10 minutes with enberg well i i'm not at all putting myself in that category
15:49but
15:49i will say i love i i kind of looked up to dick for the reason that he said he
15:53grew up listening to
15:54foster hewitt that was his hero the hockey night in canada guy uh he would always not always but almost
15:59always mention that on the u.s thanksgiving broadcast at pontiac so it was a it was a special
16:04connection that he had to our show that i vicariously felt good about well if ever this hockey day in
16:11canada comes back and it's not a 10-hour flight and an eight-hour sled ride i mean i would
16:16love to go
16:16yeah right i can't i would love to do it and maybe i'll bump into you at a we'll bump
16:20into you at a
16:21nine-holer or somewhere up in southern ontario this this summer would be uh wonderful consider
16:27well let's let's hook up with the stanley cup final don't tell montreal fans they said that
16:31okay right i won't you've already sounds like a plan you've already been you know bumped because
16:35of that the s word so i don't think anybody's hearing any of this well the good thing is all
16:40the hosts are down in buffalo so they can't replace me tonight
16:44ron thank you so much for uh saying yes to this thank you guys yeah see you on the trail
16:49real treat
16:50yeah for sure ron mclean
16:53what was your favorite part of that conversation my favorite part was that i resisted the temptation
17:00to apologize yet again for accosting him in the basement bar of massey hall at a wilco show
17:08uh i don't know like probably a year or so after we had stopped doing the regular visits like oh
17:15five
17:16oh six maybe my wife got me for my birthday really great seats at massey hall for wilco and we
17:22go
17:22downstairs to get a drink and there's ron mclean and i just i fanboyed i mean i i don't think
17:28i yelled
17:28oh my god it's ron mclean or anything so that everybody knew ron mclean was there but i just had
17:34to go say hi and shake sand and introduce myself and like say hey i don't think at that point
17:38maybe
17:39we'd already done an event with him like the saber alumni wine thing or something but i i feel like
17:43that's the first time i ever shook his hand was in the basement of massey hall at a wilco show
17:47not a
17:48bad spot no pretty good spot uh but i remember i i my i doubt he would you know he's
17:53such a such a
17:54gracious guy uh i think i brought it up to him before and he always plays it off but i
17:58know
17:59you know the look in someone's eye when you like you approach them and you're overwhelming them
18:03that was him like in that moment because i was just so excited to see him and i'm sure my
18:08eyes were
18:09just full of excitement and uh i probably was a lot is what i'd say i was a lot well
18:15you're big
18:16full bulldog dose in the basement very tight confines yeah anyway wow i know the look because
18:22i've given it that it is when you want the person to stop yeah and you don't just like walk
18:30away from
18:31them right it's rude but you're just kind of like the look is are we on today are we back
18:35the look is
18:37this yeah just move your eyes back and forth like the person's talking to you right but you're
18:42looking away from them is there someone coming that can save me that i have that's going to
18:47that's going to bar like come in here and stop this person from continuing to just be like you know
18:52well in like a real life common sense way when say you're at a bar and you're trying to meet
18:59somebody
19:00and they're just looking past you that you know usually you can get the hint yeah yeah so not
19:06every time does the person get the hint so you started like looking around and you know how i am
19:10i'm very i can be self-conscious about that sort of stuff and i probably am way hard on myself
19:15about
19:15it i'm sure it was you know tolerable but i just remember just being so excited to see him there
19:21you
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