Scott Oake signs off from Hockey Night in Canada one last time

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If it were up to Scott Oake, the end of his time on air would have been an Irish goodbye: he’d have signed off at the end of this season as he always did and then sometime this summer put in a call to the powers that be at Sportsnet and told them he was done.

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But when you’re a notable part of the broadcast, they don’t quite let you do that. And so Oake did his duty and let everyone know that this season is his last, that he’ll be packing away his mic and his notebooks and shifting into a life helping run his family’s passion project: the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre, named in memory of his son who died in 2011 after struggling with addiction, and the Anne Oake Recovery Centre, which is about to start construction and when completed will offer 75 beds for women who are in recovery.

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When you retire it’s good to have something to do and there’s little doubt that Oake will stay busy.

He’s been on air at Hockey Night in Canada since the late 1980s and working in broadcasting since the 1970s.

For Vancouver sports fans, he’s been a Saturday night fixture, no matter the era. If you’ve watched hockey in the last four decades, you’ve seen him most weekends.

Saturday he’ll work his last Canucks game, with Vancouver in San Jose to face the Sharks. Post-game he’ll once again host After Hours, the interview show that’s been running for at least 20 years to great acclaim. The Sharks’ Ryan Reaves, one of the biggest personalities in the game, will be the final guest.

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Vancouver has a special place in his heart. He grew up in Cape Breton, went to university for a time in Newfoundland and eventually settled in Winnipeg. But for more than 30 years he was the host of the late Hockey Night in Canada game that’s often brought him to the West Coast

“I’ve always loved coming to Vancouver because when you live in Winnipeg, coming to the West Coast in the middle of the winter felt like visiting the beach,” he said. Of course, there was also the hockey. His time hosting the late game meant he spent a lot of time covering heady times for the Canucks, the likes of Todd Bertuzzi and Marcus Naslund, Daniel and Henrik Sedin, Roberto Luongo and Kevin Bieksa.

There were always characters to be found, especially once After Hours locked in as a regular Saturday fixture about 20 years ago.

“Kevin Bieksa, he was perfect for that show with his sense of humour and how he never worried at all about abusing me,” he said, grinning at the thought of Bieksa, who has grown into a broadcast colleague and true star of the program.

“And Roberto Luongo, the perception of him in that market when he first got there, I think was he was a bit aloof,” he added. And he’s right, certainly in the early years, Luongo came across as guarded. He’s so well known now for being whip-smart, it’s funny to think he wasn’t always so.

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“We had him on After Hours I think four times. And I dare say we helped change the perception of him. Plus his participation on social media as ‘strombone.’”

Even as the media environment shifted, as viewership splintered and the idea of must-watch shows withered, After Hours managed to bridge the gap. It remained relevant, a program that players who were more and more raised in a world dominated by phones still understood, still recognized as a good thing to do.

“It was a show that was all about learning something about the player as a person, and I think the show generally succeeded on that level more often than not,” Oake said.

He won’t be working with hockey players to help them open up, but he’ll be supporting people looking to find themselves, to open up about their struggles. The Bruce Oake centre has been a big success. In the gymnasium they have a tradition of hanging up Winnipeg Jets sweaters in the rafters to recognize graduates after a year of sobriety, then updating those after each year their graduates add on.

“There are now more than 180 of those,” Oake said. And now they’re starting work to build a centre for women, who will be able to bring their children along. Men’s centre has space for 50; as noted, the women’s centre will have space for 75 people, between clients and their kids.

“We always wanted to add that. And once we got funding for the Bruce Oake centre stabilized, we wanted to add a program for women.”

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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