Strachan, for his part, would say only, “The decision was made by Hockey Night In Canada, so you would have to ask them why they made it. But it involves a copyright issue and not an on-camera or production issue.”

I saw some the amateur video Al shot for his book. Not very good. Perhaps that was CBC’s beef. They didn’t appreciate the video editing.

I don’t like Milbury on CBC, however, I did enjoy the kind of character he brought to TSN with their panelists.

Again, to me this shows how much better TSN ‘get it’. Aside from Ron Mclean, Jim Hughston and Elliotte Friedman, TSN destroy CBC broadcasts.

They need to have done exactly what he suggests (kept Strachan, added Duhatschek, axed Milbury) as well as increasing the length of Hot Stove. It is the only justification for sitting through 40 minutes of a Leafs game right now.

Would you have left Strachan and axed Milbury? Other than as a Strach Scratchin’ Post I can see no use for him, but then I never could understand how he got jobs as GM either. Bet some teams would agree with that last bit.

Here is a Q & A that I had with Eric in October 2007 right after the CBC had announced a new Hot Stove format (which only lasted about a month if you remember):

Richard: The Second last question I wanted to ask you is if you are going to be appearing on the Hot Stove on Hockey Night in Canada this season?

Eric: As of now, no. What happened was, they contacted both Pierre Lebrun and I at the beginning of September to say they have changed the programming and are not going to use journalists on the Satellite Hot Stove; instead they are going to use ex-players. The first two weeks it has been Scott Mellanby both times, and Sean Burke joined Mellanby last week. The new executive producer did leave the door open slightly for a possibility of something later on in the year. I think that part of the problem for me, being stationed in Calgary, was that they were trying to do away with the Satellite component of the broadcast. There were a lot of production issues with the old format that I had been on for the past ten years. People take for granted how difficult it was coordinating that format which, on many nights, had four people in four different places. I think by taking their show inside the CBC studios they eliminated a ton of their production problems. Also, there is a new regime at CBC sports that promised changes and to update the programming and Satellite Hot Stove had been on for 10-12 years. I guess it is like any series that has a good run, people wanted to stop and try something else. I mean it is kind of disappointing to not be able to do it but I have had a great relationship with the CBC in the past and hope at some point it continues; although it doesn’t seem like it would be in that particular format.

I think I heard/read Duhatschek quoted as saying he left SHS because he had too much on his plate, but that was some time ago.