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Six Top All-Time Hockey Broadcasters

• Foster Hewitt (1902–1985)

• Danny Gallivan (1917–1993)

• René Lecavalier (1918–1999)

• Howie Meeker (1923– )

• Bill Hewitt (1928–1996)

• Dick Irvin, Jr. (1932– )

When was hockey first broadcast on television?

Amazingly, the very first television broadcast of hockey occurred on October 29, 1938. The British Broadcasting Corporation aired the second and third periods of a game between the Harringay Racers and Streatham at London’s Harringay Arena. Perhaps equally surprising, the very first telecast of hockey in North America didn’t happen in Canada but in the United States. On an experimental station set up by NBC at Madison Square Garden, the network broadcast a game between the New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens on February 15, 1940. Not many people got to see the telecast, since there were fewer than 300 television sets in New York City. The first televised NHL game in Canada finally transpired on October 11, 1952, when Hockey Night in Canada debuted on the tube in French with a game between the Chicago Black Hawks and the Montreal Canadiens called by René Lecavalier at the Montreal Forum. The Habs lost to the Hawks 3–2. Three weeks later, on November 1, Hockey Night in Canada aired its initial English-language broadcast as Foster Hewitt provided the play-by-the-play for a game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Boston Bruins at Maple Leaf Gardens. The Leafs beat the Bruins 2–1. Just the last half of the game was broadcast, a policy that continued until 1968 for regular-season matches.