Behind the scenes at Coach’s Corner, the most famous segment in Canadian television
By Brett Popplewell in Toronto
Photography by Christopher Wahl
Fifteen minutes to the start of Coach’s Corner and Bob Graham, floor director for the show, is already cringing beneath his headset at what might happen the moment Don Cherry walks onto the set. “This could be bad,” he says. “Really bad.”
A stocky man whose professional existence is confined to the dark spaces off-screen, Graham has, for more than a decade, been responsible for ensuring that no stray noise, sight or scent is detectable on Coach’s Corner once Cherry starts professing into the single camera strategically positioned next to the soft lights that shine into his face. “Don doesn’t like any distractions when he’s on air,” explains Graham. “Not a sound. Not even a shadow.”
And that’s the current problem, because tonight this little sound stage tucked inside the CBC’s Toronto headquarters is almost as inconveniently exposed to unwanted sounds as it was in the old days, when the show was broadcast from underneath a staircase inside Maple Leaf Gardens.
Graham stares nervously at two TV monitors next to the set. On one he’s watching the live feed coming out of Montreal, where the Habs are hosting the Ottawa Senators in game one of their first-round series in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. There are just a few minutes left in the period, which means at any moment, Ron MacLean and Don Cherry will rise from their sitting room and make the 40-second walk to take their seats in front of the camera. But that’s not why Graham’s nervous. No, he’s nervous because on the second screen in front of him he can see that the Washington Capitals and New York Islanders are going to step off the ice at the same time as the Habs and the Senators. And when that happens, a panel of commentators watching the Capitals game will begin broadcasting loudly from a stage about 30 feet away. No one on this show wants any of those other guys to distract Cherry from nailing another instalment of the most popular—and polarizing—TV segment in Canadian sport.
Graham starts hoping for a fight to break out in Washington. “We need something, anything,” he says, “to slow that game.”
It doesn’t happen. Soon Graham, one of the only floor directors in television who has to hide behind a stage wall when his show is broadcasting, hears something on his headset. It’s Kathy Broderick, long-time producer of Coach’s Corner, speaking from her place in the control room down the hall. Broderick informs Graham that Ron and Don have left the sitting room where they’ve been drinking black coffee, snacking on oatmeal cookies and watching the games.
Graham rubs his forehead. “OK,” he says to the cameraman and stagehands by his side. “They’re travelling.”
The first sign of their pending arrival comes in the form of Anne-Marie Maugeri, an assistant on the show who has worked with Cherry so long that she now cherishes the moment every week when she meets him in the basement of the building, takes the garment bag out of his hands and accompanies him up the elevator to his dressing room. Don arrives next, sporting a Mickey Mouse tie—“The tie’s for the kids,” he says. “The kids like the ties”—and a floral-print blazer that’s hard to describe as anything other than what it is: loud drapery that he picked out by hand from a local Fabricland. “We’re good to go!” Cherry shouts as he passes Graham and the rest of the crew, a trail of Brut cologne wafting in his wake.
Cherry takes to his perch behind the desk while his makeup artist, Lianne Cousvis, does some last-minute adjustments to his complexion. “She’s just gilding the lily,” Cherry says.
MacLean, carrying his suit jacket over his arm, isn’t far behind. He speed-walks toward the set. “Stan!” he hollers out as he moves. “Yup?” replies Stan Nieradka, Coach’s Corner’s designated stats guru and on-the-fly research assistant. “I didn’t miss a goal, did I?” asks MacLean. It’s been 40 seconds since he last saw a monitor, and it’s important that he keep himself up to speed on everything that’s going on. “Nothing,” says Nieradka from his seat behind the stage wall next to the set. “Thanks, Stan,” MacLean says, passing by without even looking at him, before putting on his suit jacket and taking his seat next to Cherry.
The buzzer rings inside the Bell Centre in Montreal, and the Habs and Senators head to their dressing rooms. The Capitals and Islanders are off the ice as well, and suddenly the sound of chatter begins echoing down to the set from the other stage as commentators start weighing in on the game in Washington. Their voices are audible but thankfully soft enough that Nieradka doesn’t believe Cherry will notice. “I think we’re going to be OK,” he says, then turns out the desk light next to his computer. “Better safe than sorry,” he says. “You know, in case there’s a shadow or something.”
A few feet away on the other side of that stage wall, MacLean and Cherry make last-minute decisions before the opening animation and the start of the show. MacLean reviews a clip from the Habs-Senators game that he wants to use, while Cherry gets wired up for his pending rant. “Here it comes,” says MacLean to Cherry, pointing at a monitor to the right of the camera where the Senators’ Curtis Lazar is on screen tying up a Canadiens stick. “We need the tight shot of Lazar,” MacLean says.
Cherry doesn’t even give a hint that he’s listening. “Don, you don’t care?” asks MacLean.
“I don’t care,” mumbles Cherry.
Perplexed, MacLean tries to force the point: “That’s what led to the goal tonight!”
“I don’t want to use it!” shouts Cherry.
Graham ducks out of Cherry’s sightline, taking his place next to Nieradka behind that stage wall. Now Cherry and MacLean are just sitting there, the Hockey Night in Canada logo behind them, two light fixtures blinding them to the lone man still in their presence: Allan Boye, their long-time cameraman, dressed in black.
Then Cherry alerts everyone that he’s ready to roll. “Let’s see how we look!” he shouts. Suddenly, the big screen just off the set flips from the broadcast feed to the in-house feed, and now MacLean and Cherry are staring at themselves. Cherry nods at his image and shouts: “We look good!”
Now MacLean says something that sounds like a last-minute direction. Cherry looks at him and quiets him up. “You’re like Cecil B. DeMille here,” he says, then adds how nice it is that MacLean is “no longer just a piece of furniture” on the set.
MacLean chuckles. Cherry smiles. They drove here together today and they’ll leave together, too. Cherry unbuttons his jacket, reminds the cameraman that they’re going to start with a close-up on his tie. “Here’s the guys who make the playoffs,” Cherry says, rehearsing his opener as he points to an image of Mickey Mouse smiling and dancing.
The screen off-set cuts to the opening animation. The show’s intro music pumps through the studio. Then the light on the top of Boye’s camera flashes to red, and Cherry starts talking about his tie again. From his hiding place behind the wall, Graham looks up to that secondary stage. He can no longer hear the other commentators over Cherry’s booming monologue. Graham nods with relief then turns his eyes to a monitor tucked well out of Cherry’s sight and starts watching the show just like everybody else.
Anne-Marie Maugeri In years past, Maugeri met Cherry on the sidewalk in front of the CBC building and helped him navigate the growing crowd of autograph seekers. Now she meets him in the parking garage. She’s there as soon as he gets out of his driver’s Lincoln, ready to take his blazer, which is always concealed inside a garment bag until he reaches the studio floor.
Stan Nieradka The show’s resident stats guru is the only man Cherry says might know more about the game than he does. Whatever hockey-related query Nieradka can’t answer on the spot he can generally solve in a matter of minutes.
Kathy Broderick Each of Cherry’s more than 1,500 tweets have been personally transcribed and posted by Broderick, the majority of them from phone messages he leaves on her work voicemail after hours. After he’s left a voice message at her desk, Cherry calls Broderick’s cellphone, lets it ring once and then hangs up to alert her that he has “tweeted.”
Bob Graham Graham isn’t the first floor director to work with Coach’s Corner, nor is he the first to have to hide from sight each time the show goes to air. That tradition dates to a segment shot at the Montreal Forum in the late 1980s, when Cherry was deeply distracted by a lighting technician who sat down in the periphery of his vision and ate ice cream.
Lianne Cousvis Cousvis has been doing Cherry’s makeup for 20 years. He appreciates her work and friendship so much that he once gifted her a pet budgie. When that budgie died, he went out and bought her another. She named the current one Bentley, in homage to Cherry’s appreciation for classy automobiles.
