Sportsnet cut a 28-year Hockey Night veteran three days after CBC's NHL exit
Kelly Hrudey said Sportsnet told him on June 19 that his contract would not be renewed.
Three days earlier, Rogers and CBC had jointly announced the public broadcaster would stop carrying NHL games. That timeline is the part of this story worth sitting with.
The Saturday program Hrudey worked for 28 years lost its second network on June 16. His phone call came on the 19th.
Hrudey played 677 games for the New York Islanders, Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks, and started broadcasting part-time while he was still playing. CBC hired him full-time in 1998, right after he retired.
He moved to Sportsnet in 2014 when Rogers took over the national rights, and spent the last dozen years on a Saturday show that aired on two networks at once.
The panel got smaller because the schedule did
Rogers is now in year one of a 12-year, $11-billion rights agreement, and it is producing hockey for fewer partners than before. CBC is gone, and Wednesday nights belong to Prime Video under a sublicensing deal signed July 28.
Sportsnet keeps Monday and Saturday nights, more than 500 national games and most of the playoffs. What it no longer needs is a studio roster built for the simulcast era.
Rogers has not explained the decision publicly or named a replacement.
Act three has an obvious address
Prime Video has not announced its Canadian on-air team for Wednesday Night Hockey, which begins September 30.
That package runs in English and French and includes two first-round playoff series and one second-round series every year.
Hrudey was careful to say this is not a retirement.
A brand-new national broadcast needs a recognizable goaltending voice, and one just became available with under two months of runway.
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