Ralph Mellanby was the guy who put Don Cherry in Coach’s Corner. The Hamilton, Ont. native died last Saturday, Jan. 29, at 87.
Raised near Windsor, Ont., the innovative executive producer of Hockey Night in Canada was one of the country’s most influential television broadcasters. Back in the ’60s, he was quick to embrace modern techniques such as slow-motion replays and multiple camera angles.
In 1981, he was looking to stir things up between periods on NHL games when he hired former Bruins and Avalanche coach Cherry as a TV commentator. Mellanby paired “Grapes” with then HNiC host Dave Hodge and, starting in 1986, Ron MacLean.
The result: for a few years at least, more viewers watched the intermission segments than the hockey game.
Some were startled by Cherry’s brusk manner and combative, bar patron patter. Ignoring the pleas of others at the network, Mellanby gave the coach some valuable advice: don’t change. Never get media training. Stay just the way you are. It worked for over 30 years until it didn’t.
Mellanby, of course, was responsible for much more than simply Cherry picking. Dick Irvin Jr., Howie Meeker, Bob Cole, Dan Kelly and Brian McFarlane all became household hockey names under his watch. At one point he tried to hire future Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek to host Hockey Night in Canada. He wound up taking a chance on 26-year-old Dave Hodge — then the inaugural play-by-play voice of the Buffalo Sabres — instead. (Read more on that from Erik Brady of The Buffalo News.)
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Revered on both sides of the border, Mellanby was a top Olympic Games producer, winning Emmys for, among other things. coverage of the American “Miracle on Ice” at the 1980 Games in Lake Placid, N.Y.
Cambridge Mass., reader Kevin Vahey, long associated with live sports coverage as a camera-editor in the Boston area, has contributed to stories here in the past. He messaged to relay one vivid memory of Mellanby’s hands-on style.
Back in 1979, bitter rivals Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens were locked in a tight Stanley Cup semifinal. With Montreal up two games to one, Game Four at the Boston Garden was heading into overtime.
“CBC and SRC are shoehorned into the WSBK-TV truck in Boston,” recalls Vahey, who explains that “in those days the old Garden could only do one feed that everybody shared.”
Because the overtime could still be seen on french language SRC, somebody at CBC decided to ditch the game. There was a big story breaking that Margaret Thatcher would become Britain’s nexr prime minister.
When Mellanby found out CBC was sticking with news, “Ralph exploded,” recalls Vahey. “He found a technician [in Toronto] that gave the network back to the truck in Boston. He was sure he would be fired but instead CBC fired the person in news who demanded the network stay with the election. Luckily the OT was quick.”
Lucky for the Bruins; Jean Ratelle scored his third goal, tying up the series at two wins a piece. (Canadiens got lucky three games later when the Bruins got called for too many men on the ice. Guy LaFleur scored to rob Boston of a Stanley Cup bid).
Vahey says Mellanby was a fan of Boston’s hockey coverage crew and hired some of them to cover Lake Placid Olympic Games the next year.
He had his own fans, among them ABC sports legend Roone Arledge. The American TV Hall of Famer borrowed a trick or two from Mellanby’s HNiC blueprint when setting up his own NFL cornerstone, Monday Night Football.
