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ANNOUNCER: From our city to yours...
I'm Gary Steeves for Accessible Media.
I'm here at Rogers Arena. We're checking out
the Vancouver Canucks versus the Columbus Blue Jackets.
The Canucks have lost five games in a row,
so I'll be curious to see what they do tonight.
We're going to the morning skate, we've got the press pass,
see what happens next.
MAN: No, we haven't gotten the points or the wins.
GARY: It doesn't take long to get thrown into the mix.
Canucks' head coach John Tortorella
does his press conference while the team is skating
rather than after.
He had this to say about finding his way around
the new organization,
after being coach of the Canucks for 20 games.
Getting there. Getting there, and them getting to know me.
Yeah, I don't think it's
I think when you go through stuff like this,
when you're in a little bit of a jam
and not finding your way to win some games,
I think you find out about your people.
I think they find out about us and how we go about our business
in trying to get them out of it.
You know, there's quite a bit of scrutiny.
Everybody tries to give us a lot of help
in what to do with the team.
Um, every day. And, uh
(Chuckling)
But I I kind of enjoy how What the pressure is.
It's there every day.
The people I talk to, they
As I've said to our guys out here,
every time I talk to someone, that word "Stanley Cup"
comes up every time in the conversation.
Um, so I think it's good.
I think the scrutiny, the excitement,
the pressure that comes with it, it's where you want to be.
After his comments, and he petted my guide dog Bogart,
fellow reporter and I Rob Simpson headed up to the seats
in Rogers Arena to watch the morning skate.
This is a brief, sometimes informal practice,
where the players get their blood flowing
and the coaches have an opportunity
to share game strategy.
Both teams do it. The home team always goes first,
thus they have the advantage of having lunch
and their afternoon nap first.
Gradually, the players head back into the dressing room
to meet the media.
As a blind goal tender, I was curious to talk net-minding
with Canucks back-up Eddie Lack,
who recently signed a two-year contract extension.
Starting goalies, by the way,
in this case Roberto Luongo,
never speak to the media on game day.
I've always wondered this about goalies in the NHL:
do you guys develop a book on shooters and stuff,
about what people generally do?
No, but, uh, I usually watch, like, a little bit of clips
before about, uh, players on the other teams and stuff,
but I don't have like a special black book
with a lot of shooting types and styles.
Which is attached to your water bottle
when you do the shoot out, right?
"It's a penalty shot. What's he doing?"
Yeah, I'm writing it on my blocker,
little pointers and stuff.
And what's it like playing with Luongo?
Oh, it's awesome. He's an awesome dude,
and I feel like I'm learning stuff from him every day.
After the media availability ends for the home team,
we head back up to the stands to watch the visitors skate.
In this case, the Columbus Blue Jackets.
For the most part, it's a chance for media members
and hockey people to schmooze, talk hockey and get caught up.
I was going to talk to the goalie, actually,
and hear what he has to say about
the different kind of stretches and things he does.
Because I can tell you, in blind hockey,
I do about three stretches before I start playing,
so maybe I need to do some more, eh?
Again, once this is over,
the road team's available for the media.
Rob and I make our way down to the Blue Jackets dressing room
to speak to 23-year-old Matt Calvert,
who's recently back from missing 19 games
with an injury.
I want to come into the game hard,
but I'm going to feel my way in.
I haven't been on the ice in a while,
so I'm going to come out hard, try to provide some energy,
and the rest will take care of itself.
What's called a "scrum", AKA a gang of reporters,
moves around the room, while others peel off
for one-on-one conversations with players.
It's a pretty busy morning,
with some down times between flurries of activity.
I'm ready for lunch, but before that,
some thoughts on tonight's game.
I'm really excited about being
in the press box tonight, actually.
I've never been in the press box at a hockey game.
Seeing what goes on.
I heard the PR person of the Canucks saying that a lot of
the Chicago folks are going to be up in the box tonight,
so that's pretty cool.
I was in the press box for the Grey Cup a couple of years ago,
for the B.C. Lions, so I'll see how that compares.
And, uh, that should be really a unique experience, I think.
As I came up to Rogers Arena,
you could feel the tension in the air.
The Canucks had lost five in a row,
and were they going to win tonight?
Once we headed inside, the calm came over us as we made our way
up to the press box and got settled in.
There's not much to do other than watch or listen to hockey.
I listened to the game on an AM radio
using my ear bud headphones
while taking in the atmosphere.
The first period ends, tied 1-1.
Well, we're up in the press box here. It's pretty interesting.
Basically there's a bunch of chairs,
there's a little counter about the size of
a pad of paper or maybe your laptop.
and a five-inch or couple inches blocker,
and then it's straight down about five stories to the ice.
So maybe it's one of those places where not seeing so well
is a bit of an advantage, anyway.
What a pleasant surprise in the second period.
We discovered former NHL goaltender
andHockey Night in Canada commentator Kelly Hrudey
sitting in the press box.
He was watching the game in preparation for his TV game
the next night between the Canucks and the Black Hawks.
What a treat to talk goaltending and broadcasting
with a hockey legend.
Here are a few highlights from the conversation.
What do you do to prepare for a game?
Well, for me, Gary, it starts early in the week.
So I watch as many hockey games involving the teams
that I'm going to cover as I possibly can.
And it usually leaks into two weeks
of watching those particular teams.
So it's just not a one-off, so I have enough information,
a bit of their background,
what certain players have been doing the last little while,
you know, some of their team structure, things like that.
You know, a lot of the things we write down, as a broadcaster,
you'll have tons and tons of notes, and I bet the broadcast,
you won't get 20 or 30% of that out there.
It's just The game, you watch the game, see how it's flowing,
and if it makes sense to throw that in there
And for me, doing colour now, it's a little bit different,
because I used to be a studio analyst,
and I'm not big on stats, really.
So for me, I just like to tell people why something happened,
and show them clips of
Whereas I think, in colour, you have to throw in more stats.
It's a learning experience for me.
So, Kelly, I mentioned that I play goalie on a blind hockey
That's amazing, that's cool.
So, you know, playing goalie in the NHL in the past,
what has changed about goaltenders now
from when you were playing, and what they're like now.
Oh, millions of things.
You know, the position was,
based on the type of equipment we wore, it wasn't very good.
And so, the fact of the matter is, my time,
and even before I played,
goalies often would be scared of the puck.
So that would be one thing, that rarely would a goaltender
be afraid of a puck now,
and rarely would a goaltender get hurt by a shot,
whereas, in my day, that happened
I wouldn't say on a regular basis,
but it happened often enough.
Uh, another stupid thing, when I was playing,
the goal pads weren't all that protective around your toes,
and the skates could only protect you so much.
Uh, in practice, probably in around December and on,
I'm not
Again, people are going to laugh at this, but in practice,
a guy would shoot pretty hard shot along the ice,
and instead of making a save,
I'd lift my foot off the ice and let the puck go in the net.
It hits you and
Yeah, my toes are so beaten up.
So And many other things.
Their technique's way better.
It's a really fun position to watch still.
The post-game is much like the morning skate
which we described earlier, only quicker.
There's no time to mess around.
We're in the dressing room as soon as it's open to the media.
And suddenly, I'm surrounded by media talking to hockey stars.
Here's Henrik Sedin's comments on the game.
Yeah, I don't think we played a whole lot better tonight
than we have in the past three games,
apart from the Florida game maybe.
But we got the goals, here we are talking about
a nice win instead of losing.
It's a huge difference for us.
I talked with Eddie Lack in the morning,
Kelly Hrudey during the game,
so to complete my goaltender trifecta,
I had the opportunity to meet and talk with
Vancouver Canucks goaltender Robert Luongo.
Curious about how you feel about your team's penalty goals
just going on all cylinders?
Yeah, we've been playing really well.
I think just studied a lot of film on how to kill it, we're,
uh, everybody knows their role on the ice,
and it makes my job easier, 'cause I know where
everybody's going to be and what their role is,
and so far, we've done a good job with it.
And to come full circle from the start of the day,
we ended our evening in front of head coach John Tortorella
at the Canucks' post-game press conference.
And this time, he had a reason to be in a much better mood.
But the big challenge comes 24 hours later
when defending Stanley Cup champions
Chicago Black Hawks are in town.
Tonight, they'll enjoy it.
I mean, not about going out on the town.
They should feel good about themselves
as far as what they did tonight.
We'll have our meetings tomorrow.
And they know what's coming tomorrow.
They know who we're playing, and we're looking forward to it.
Uh, yeah. I trust the team.
It's a veteran group, it's a good leadership group.
They know what's ahead of us here
and they'll be ready to play.
Well, as Tort says,
this whole thing happens again tomorrow night.
In fact, 82 times a season, they go through the same things
I went through here today.
It's been an awesome experience, getting to talk to players,
talk to coaches Not get yelled at by Torts
And just to see what goes on behind the scenes for the media.
In Vancouver, I'm Gary Steeves for Accessible Media.