Looking back at the career of Oilers radio man Rod Phillips, who called his final game Tuesday.
EDMONTON - There was a time when half of the local squad's National Hockey League games were televised. Maybe less.
And for those of us not living in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver? We were just lucky if our World Hockey Association games got played at all. Forget about television.
It was the 1970s, when an afternoon newspaper and the local radio play-by-play man were, on many nights, the only insight a young fan had into his team. We listened to AM radio in our bedrooms late at night, and we liked it.
I know. It sounds prehistoric.
I'll take you back to a time when the local radio man was so much more than just the guy who told you who had the puck every night. He was your portal into the team; our ears and eyes in a time before television gave them us our own, with the Centre Ice package and games every night of the week on basic cable.
Basic cable? In 1975, that was a contradiction of terms.
Yes, before the IPad - even (gasp!) before the Internet itself - we had Rod Phillips, in Edmonton. Or Peter Maher, in Calgary. In Toronto you had Foster Hewitt, then his son Bill, and now the oh-so-listenable Joe Bowen.
But for 37 years, up until his 3,542nd and final game last night, Phillips was The Voice in Edmonton. And like all great relationships, both sides had to bring something to the table to blend a cocktail that a Northern Alberta hockey fan could drink for nearly four decades without ever feeling like you needed to order something else.
The Oilers, of course, gave Phillips a dynasty to narrate. From 50 Gretzky goals in 39 games, to five Stanley Cups, to a Battle of Alberta that grew so violent at times that by today's standards neither team would have been able to field a line-up the next night for all the suspensions.
And Phillips gave them what every team needs: A strong set of pipes and an imagination that could make the worst game sound fantastic. He was a hardcore fan masquerading as a mostly objective purveyor of the action, and he fooled no one.
Phillips called every single game of a dynasty that, you could argue, was as good as there ever was. And, as he signed off last night after working a game that was as dry as those dynasty games were electrifying, you could say that Phillips, too, was as good as there ever was.
But you really had to be there, because even the greatest radio man is, in the end, a local story. Unless you were in within range of CFRN 1260's signal, up high on the AM band, you heard Rod Phillips as often as a Montrealer heard Vancouver's Tommy Larscheid.
Wherever we grew up though, we all had a Tom Cheek, a Danny Gallivan or an Ernie Harwell. They shaped us, and when we finally got to the rink or the ballpark, we looked for the game they'd been describing for all those years.
If you could somehow conduct the survey, you'd find that today's 45-year-old Buffalonian likes the same type of player, and wants his Sabres to play the same type of style as Rick Jeanerette wants to see.
Can you recall Dennis Martinez's perfect game without thinking of Dave Van Horne's, "El Presidente. El Perfecto!" They go together like beer and peanuts.
Or try and walk by a television when Vin Scully, the legendary Los Angeles Dodgers announcer, is working - alone in the Dodger Stadium booth at age 83 - telling stories about characters like Maury Wills, Sandy Koufax, and a game that tells his story as well as Scully tells its.
When I was seven, I would tune into the Alberta Oilers' WHA games, often late at night from places like San Diego and Birmingham. Phillips would describe how the boards at the St. Paul Civic Center were see-through, how a kid named Messier looked for the Cincinnati Stingers, and how Gordie Howe fit with sons Mark and Marty on a line with the Houston Aeros.
Highlights were nonexistent some nights in the NHL, and most nights in the WHA. Literally, there were times when the games weren't even being filmed.
Phillips' final game Tuesday night, a 2-0 Los Angeles victory over a debilitated and defeated Oilers squad, was not reflective of his body of work. For a man who called as many as 446 goals in a single season for the five highest scoring teams in NHL history - all Oilers, all '80s - today's collection of Edmonton call-ups and also-rans failed to induce one last "He scooooores!" from a man who said it more than most.
They raised a banner Tuesday with the numbers of games he's worked, 3542, on it. And it will hang in the rafters of Rexall Place, and likely the new arena in a few years.
As for Phillips, he'll come up from his Arizona retirement to catch the odd game, but none from the seat in which he signed off Tuesday.
"Thirty seven years and 10 games this season," he said, thanking the team, his colleagues and the fans. "And now this is Rod Phillips saying good night and goodbye, from Edmonton."
