(AUDIO) Countdown to Hometown Hockey

The Rogers Hometown Hockey Tour is in North Bay October 17th and 18th and to get ready we’ve started the Countdown to Hometown Hockey, a presentation of U-Need-A-Cab.

The countdown is over, the Rogers Hometown Hockey Tour is here!

We wrap up our series with a few interviews, starting with anchor Ron MacLean.

The live broadcast on Sunday night starts at 8:30 pm on Sportsnet One and Sportsnet 360 with MacLean and will precede the NHL game between Vancouver and Edmonton.

For all the details, check out the Rogers Hometown Hockey Tour website HERE.

MacLean talked about a couple of referees in his interview with Bob Coles, who also talked with Ken Miller.

He also talked with Steve Walkom.

In the 11th segment of our series we met North Bay Battalion owner Scott Abbott.

He moved the team here from Brampton for the 2013-2014 OHL season and the Troops responded by making it to the OHL final.

In part 10 of our series we met Battalion head coach Stan Butler.

He’s been the Troops coach since 1998 and has won more OHL games, over 600, than any current OHL coach.

It was over 3 decades ago that a North Bay team won a national midget hockey championship at Memorial Gardens.

The story of the Pinehill Coffee Shop team that won the Air Canada Cup in 1984 is the subject of part 9 in our series.

Brent Bywater was on the team.

In part 8, we met former North Bay Centennials defenseman Bill Houlder, who also played 846 games in the NHL with seven different teams.

He was born in Thunder Bay, moved here as a teenager to play his junior hockey and then returned after his NHL career was over.

Bob Coles talked with Tom Hedican, the creator and manager of Coach4Food, in part 7 of our series.

He says he got the idea back in 2005 from musician Bruce Springsteen, who always talks about giving back at his concerts.

A decade later, Hedican‘s idea has spread and now the OHL teams are involved and this season they can reach a million pounds of donated food in the history of the program.

Darren Turcotte has had an interesting journey in his hockey life and he’s the focus of part 6 of our series. Turcotte grew up in North Bay, played his OHL career here with the Centennials, moved on to the NHL and several years ago returned home to begin his coaching career.

He took a girls team to a national championship game, became an assistant with the Nipissing men’s team and is now head coach of the Lakers women’s program.

In part 5 we met Sharon Fung, the creator of the North Bay North Stars, a special needs hockey team,

She says there wasn’t one in North Bay in 2007 and felt there should be one as her son needed to be comfortable when playing the game.

Fung says she did her homework and found that there were many special needs hockey teams in Southern Ontario and it only made sense to get one going here.

Bob Coles talks with Mayor Al McDonald in part 4 of our series.

He has been involved with convincing the Battalion to come here, starting the university program at Nipissing University and even the Save The Cents campaign in 2001.

Hometown Hockey will be here next Saturday, October 17th and Sunday, October 18th.

In part 3 we looked back to when North Bay was Hockeyville in 2007.

An NHL exhibition game between the Atlanta Thrashers and the New York Islanders was played at Memorial Gardens. The prize was also $60,000 which paid for the digital sign outside Memorial Gardens.

Bob Coles talks with Committee Chair Chris Dawson, who remembers it was down to North Bay and Cornwall with winner being announced live on Hockey Night in Canada. He says it’s had a lasting impact.

Part 2 featured NHL Hall of Famer Bill Barber.

Barber says he picked up the game at an early age playing outdoors and it was a great family activity for all the Barbers. One of his career highlights, which included two Stanley Cups and being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, was helping lead the North Bay Trappers to a Northern Ontario Junior Hockey Championship.

In part one, we started with a look at some of the top hockey moments in the city’s history.

Bob Coles went to veteran hockey historian Peter Handley who discusses top local teams like the POHA champion Trappers in the mid-70’s, the Flying Fathers and who Handley says was the best North Bay-born NHL’er.