Fifty Years of Hockey

Fifty years isn't a lot in comparison with other great Canadian hockey institutions like the Maple Leafs (75 years) the NHL (originally Canadian; 84 years) and the Montreal Canadiens (92 years). But HNIC/SDH have united Canadians in front of their television for the past half-century, since it turned on to television airwaves.

Hockey Night began much earlier, not the November 1, 1952, CBC has been advertising, but rather sometime in the 1930s. The first coast-to-coast broadcast occured in 1933, with a game between the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs as the voice of Foster Hewitt echoed on the airwaves.

La Soirée du Hockey came a little later, in November of 1937 with a game between the Maroons and the Bruins. René Lecavalier started to do play-by-play much later but became of Hewitt fame.

Since I didn't have a television, I remember listening, from time to time, to the hockey games on HNIC on CBC radio, including part of the Stanley Cup finals between Montreal and Los Angeles. Hockey ended on public radio in 1997.

In 1952, hockey began on television, beginning a new page in the history of hockey. On October 11th, 1952, a game in Montreal was broadcast by both public networks, with René Lecavalier on SRC and Foster Hewitt on CBC.

Of course it wasn't all live and it wasn't the whole game at the time for fear that attendance would go down if people could watch the whole game on TV. But that changed soon enough and Hockey Night in Canada/La Soirée du Hockey were there in the golden age of hockey. HNIC saw the Leafs celebrate four Stanley Cups and La Soirée du Hockey let us see Les Glorieux win 18.

Although hockey began in Québec as a sport and as a professional league (both the NHA and NHL), the words and rules were all in English. It is thanks to La Soirée du Hockey's René Lecavalier that the French terminology was created.

It's only in the late fifties that one could watch all playoff games on HNIC/SDH.

Now Ron McLean, Bob Cole, Harry Neale and Don Cherry, and their SRC counterparts Michel Bergeron, Jean Pagé, René Pothier and Claude Quennville, have replaced the likes of Foster Hewitt and René Lecavalier; Saturday night is always hockey night; and millions of Canadians will continue to watch HNIC even though it's become Leaf Hockey Night in Canada just as La Soirée de Hockey is Canadien Hockey.

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