Ron MacLean addressed Don Cherry’s dismissal with a lengthy monologue during the first period intermission of Saturday’s “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcast, saying “Coach’s Corner is no more.”
MacLean opened the intermission segment, the first since Sportsnet fired Cherry on Monday, by speaking alone on camera for nearly five minutes.
“We are all hurting. I have collapsed 100 times this week, if not more,” MacLean said. “We are all disappointed … I’ve sat all week long reflecting, listening to you (the viewer) — and I have heard you. I’ve reflected by listening to my own heart … and I’ve struggled mightily to find the words.”
Sportsnet fired Cherry two days after comments on last Saturday’s Coach’s Corner, which many felt were critical of immigrants for not wearing Remembrance Day poppies. Cherry had singled out new immigrants in Toronto and Mississauga, where he lives. Outrage mounted until his dismissal was announced. Cherry later denied he was singling out visible minorities.
The Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council said it received so many complaints that it overloaded the reporting system.
MacLean, the longtime co-host of Coach’s Corner with Cherry, apologized last Sunday for the comments and his lack of response at the time. He reiterated that Saturday night.
“I felt so bad and I apologized immediately. And Don, you know Don, defiant,” MacLean said. “There were steps that needed to be taken because of what had been said by Don, and he didn’t want to do those steps. So he made his choice and I made mine.”
MacLean also talked at length about his close relationship with Cherry, but said he had to choose “principle over friendship.”
“I thought a lot about falling on my sword too,” said MacLean. “But then I thought, if I do that I infer what happened was right somehow, or that I am going along to get along, or that I am going to just sit silently by or be a bystander again in a situation.”
Saturday night’s first intermission also featured a segment with MacLean interviewing Hockey Hall of Fame inductees Hayley Wickenheiser and Guy Carbonneau ahead of Monday’s ceremony. Wickenheiser said she appreciated that Cherry “was always talking about women’s hockey.”
Sportsnet called Cherry’s remarks from last Saturday “divisive,” and said they “do not represent our values or what we stand for” when announcing his firing. The network also announced earlier that they could take the long-running Coach’s Corner segment in a different direction.
Initial online reactions to MacLean’s comments were mixed. Several people noted that MacLean barely touched on the xenophobic words that got Cherry booted.
“Ron MacLean: Not a single mention of racism, xenophobia, or any of the people harmed by the bigotry he helped promote to icon status over the past 35 years. Instead, an apology to, and elegy for, Don Cherry. Ron should hang ’em up,” tweeted Derrick O’Keefe.
Journalist Davide Mastracci tweeted, “Ron MacLean’s message didn’t include the word ‘racism’ once, instead whitewashing Don Cherry’s legacy.”
In his apology last week, MacLean called Cherry’s comments “hurtful and prejudiced” and saying, “I wish I had handled myself differently.”
Some online commenters praised MacLean for his monologue.
“I watched (MacLean’s) sincere, heartfelt words delivered at intermission, and I’m really proud of how he handled that. I’m proud he’s a colleague and a friend,” tweeted Sportsnet reporter Eric Engels.
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“We should all learn from Ron; it’s OK to make mistakes, it’s what you learn and how you respond that defines your character,” wrote Emily Foucault.
Others simply seemed exasperated by the Cherry news cycle.
“I’m just trying to make it through the day without seeing Don Cherry on my timeline man,” tweeted Justin Dubreuil.