Six years after the infamous Coach’s Corner segment that ended Don Cherry’s four-decade run on “Hockey Night in Canada,” we’re still litigating the ending.
A long-form profile in the Kingston Whig-Standard by Gare Joyce last week included startling new claims from Ron MacLean, Cherry’s former on-air partner. MacLean suggested Cherry had orchestrated his 2019 departure from “Hockey Night” as a kind of planned “exit strategy,” citing an apparent health scare that MacLean claimed happened during the 2019 Stanley Cup final in Boston.
“He was ready to have an exit strategy,” MacLean said in the article. “From that moment on, he was plotting a way out … and I thought he did it well.”
The framing was, at best, poorly attuned and, at worst, revisionist.
MacLean detailed Cherry’s alleged illness, described moments where he “had to park him on a bench and get his luggage,” and relayed a story about NHL commissioner Gary Bettman informing him that Cherry had been admitted to hospital.
Cherry’s reaction? Disbelief.
In a blistering rebuttal published by Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington the next day, Cherry called the claims false. “No, I wasn’t looking for a way out,” he said. “I never even thought of that.”
Rogers owns just about everything in Canadian pro sports. And it’s acting like it.
And on the topic of being hospitalized in Boston?
“I didn’t go to the hospital in Boston. I went to my room,” Cherry said. “I was pretty tired, but I just didn’t go to the hospital.”
This isn’t just a factual dispute. It cuts to the heart of one of the most controversial exits in Canadian broadcasting history. Cherry has always maintained he wasn’t planning his departure, and that his comments, however divisive, were genuine and unplanned. Whether you agree with what he said or not, what followed wasn’t a retirement. It was a firing.
Which makes the new spin feel off. No one really believes Cherry wanted out on those terms. And no one believes MacLean in 2019 thought his co-host was “liberated” by the backlash that followed.
Fans who supported Cherry haven’t forgotten MacLean’s actions in the days that followed the “you people” remark. They remember him on national television, publicly distancing himself from his friend of 38 years. They remember the apology. They remember it didn’t feel like someone quietly covering for a friend easing into retirement. It felt like someone choosing his chair over his co-host.
If last week’s article left a bad taste, MacLean’s latest statement may be an attempt to rinse it out.
“I was completely out of line to engage in the conjecture and to share details of Don’s health scare in 2019,” MacLean said Sunday. “I’m deeply sorry. I’ve apologized to Don.”
That kind of clarity is rare. In a media world full of carefully worded statements and dodged accountability, MacLean’s comment is about as close to an unqualified apology as you’ll hear.
But it raises the obvious question: Why bring it up in the first place?
The 91-year-old broadcaster launched his podcast just a week after being fired from Sportsnet in
Why mention private health matters six years later? Why paint a picture of Cherry as frail, strategic, and eager to walk away from a job he was fighting to keep? Why suggest it was mutual when every fact, quote, and clip says otherwise?
This isn’t just about reputations. It’s about trust. Not just between two former co-hosts, but between a broadcaster and his audience.
Fans watched Cherry and MacLean as a package deal for years. They didn’t always agree with them, but they trusted the dynamic. MacLean was the steady hand, Cherry was the firebrand. When it unravelled, it wasn’t just about politics or poppies. It was about loyalty and integrity, the kind of unspoken code that comes with sitting next to someone on national TV every Saturday night for nearly four decades.
The hurt hasn’t healed, at least publicly.
“I don’t want to talk to him about it,” Cherry told Warmington. His wife Luba added that MacLean wouldn’t be welcome in their home.
You don’t need to be a psychologist or a media critic to figure out where things stand.
This entire saga, from Poppygate to now, is a case study in legacy, narrative control and fractured trust. It’s also a reminder that if no one pushes back, the truth can quietly be rewritten.
Cherry says his podcast will be back next season. We’ll see what unfolds this fall.
What’s clear is this: He didn’t orchestrate his own exit. He was shown the door. And now, his old co-host admits he was wrong to suggest otherwise.
That matters. Because history isn’t just about what happened. It’s about who gets to tell the story.
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