Chris Cuthbert, who continued a four-decade career as one of the pre-eminent hockey play-by-play announcers on the North American continent when he returned to Hockey Night in Canada in 2020, has become the second NHL announcer and third in the four major pro sports with 1,500 national telecasts to his credit. He reached that round-number milestone on Saturday, Jan. 18, when the Montreal Canadiens hosted the Toronto Maple Leafs as part of the annual Hockey Day in Canada festivities.
At the close of the game, Cuthbert was credited with 1,367 play-by-play appearances. About one in 10 of those play-by-play calls (132) came for a U.S. network, where he has appeared on ESPN, SportsChannel America, Versus and an assortment of NBC channels. The remaining 133 games came as an on-site host or reporter. Forty-five games were simulcast on both sides of the international border: these games are counted on each country’s leaderboard but not double-counted in the total.
(Un/Necessary Sports Research's telecast data comes from the 506 Sports Archive and includes national telecasts only. Teams' local telecasts, including some Maple Leafs telecasts that Cuthbert calls for Sportsnet but which are only available in the team's viewing area, are not included.)
In NHL lore, Cuthbert trails only Bob Cole (1,723) as the most frequent commentator on an English-language national telecast. Dick Stockton also amassed 1,544 games across all four major professional sports, including 23 NHL broadcasts.
A native of Brampton, Ontario, Cuthbert graduated from Queen’s University and was the sports director at CJAD radio in Montreal before joining CBC in 1984. He made his HNIC debut that fall, hosting a Nordiques-Flames tilt in Calgary on Oct. 13 with Jim Robson and John Davidson. The first national play-by-play credit came four weeks later on a Canadiens-Flames game alongside Davidson with Brian McFarlane hosting.
By 1990-91, Cuthbert’s responsibilities had shifted more from hosting to play-by-play, and he helmed one CBC booth in the conference finals annually from 1993 to 2004, working mostly with John Garrett and Greg Millen. (The TSN crew of Gord Miller and Pierre McGuire handled three of the four games of the Wild-Mighty Ducks conference final in 2003, but Cuthbert and Millen were on the lone CBC telecast in Game 1.)
In 2005, as the NHL lockout was concluding, Cuthbert signed with TSN to be their lead football announcer, which would span hundreds of games and 12 consecutive Grey Cups (2008-19) that do not factor into this total. TSN also held NHL cable rights at the time, and he went on to handle more than two dozen games that year, but would not return to a conference final until 2008.
Rogers Communications’ 12-year national contract with the NHL took effect in the fall of 2014, and for the next six years, his only national work came in Canada’s more populous southern neighbor to the tune of 107 games for NBC and NBCSN.
Cuthbert departed TSN in June 2020, rejoining Rogers before that year’s pandemic-delayed playoffs resumed in August. “I’m getting old,” he told the Canadian Press that summer, when he noted that Rogers would hold exclusive national rights until just after his 69th birthday in 2026. “The opportunity to do more playoff hockey and to do hockey on Saturday nights was just too inviting."
That summer, he racked up 43 telecasts in 45 days from the Western Conference playoff bubble in Edmonton as the consolidated playoff schedule allowed broadcast talent to call games without traveling between cities and sometimes set up multiple games on the same day. He would go on to work the 2021 Stanley Cup Final after Jim Hughson cut back to only doing games in Vancouver and assumed the lead role when Cole retired that summer.
As a national play-by-play announcer, Cuthbert has worked with 80 partners, a list led by Scott Russell (264 times) and Craig Simpson (257). Seven other commentators (Greg Millen, Ray Ferraro, Kyle Bukauskas, John Garrett, Scott Oake, Glenn Healy, and Dick Irvin) have appeared with him at least 100 times.
Nevertheless, the game that Wikipedia calls Cuthbert’s breakthrough moment came when he flew solo in 1988. On April 18, CBC sent its lead crew to Game 1 of the Bruins-Canadiens series with Cuthbert stationed in Washington for updates and highlights of the Devils-Capitals game. A blackout smothered Montreal and much of Quebec that night, and while emergency power allowed the game at the Forum to finish, the telecast was unable to continue. That left Cuthbert and producer Jim Hough in Washington for the final two and a half hours of that game and would go on to earn the talent a Gemini award nomination from the Canadian Cinema and Television Academy.
At the team level, Cuthbert has called five of the NHL’s seven Canadian teams more than 200 times each, paced by the Maple Leafs (331) and Oilers (250). His most common American franchise is the Red Wings (112), with the Stars and Avalanche also appearing more than 100 times.
Cuthbert’s NHL career has taken him to 59 rinks, including 29 that were alternate sites or are now defunct; he has yet to call a national game from Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle or the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, although local telecasts may have taken him there. Scotiabank Arena in Toronto has hosted the most Cuthbert telecasts with 152, topping Northlands Coliseum (132) and the Olympic Saddledome. San Jose’s SAP Center edges Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena (39) for the most games in an American facility.
Cuthbert added to his total Wednesday night while we posted this article, handling a Blue Jackets-Maple Leafs telecast on Sportsnet with Simpson and Shawn McKenzie. At his current rate just north of 70 national telecasts a year, Cuthbert could reach Stockton’s total of 1,544 telecasts by the end of this season’s playoffs, with Cole’s mark of 1,723 next in line about two and a half years later.
In NHL lore, Cuthbert trails only Bob Cole (1,723) as the most frequent commentator on an English-language national telecast. Dick Stockton also amassed 1,544 games across all four major professional sports, including 23 NHL broadcasts.
A native of Brampton, Ontario, Cuthbert graduated from Queen’s University and was the sports director at CJAD radio in Montreal before joining CBC in 1984. He made his HNIC debut that fall, hosting a Nordiques-Flames tilt in Calgary on Oct. 13 with Jim Robson and John Davidson. The first national play-by-play credit came four weeks later on a Canadiens-Flames game alongside Davidson with Brian McFarlane hosting.
By 1990-91, Cuthbert’s responsibilities had shifted more from hosting to play-by-play, and he helmed one CBC booth in the conference finals annually from 1993 to 2004, working mostly with John Garrett and Greg Millen. (The TSN crew of Gord Miller and Pierre McGuire handled three of the four games of the Wild-Mighty Ducks conference final in 2003, but Cuthbert and Millen were on the lone CBC telecast in Game 1.)
In 2005, as the NHL lockout was concluding, Cuthbert signed with TSN to be their lead football announcer, which would span hundreds of games and 12 consecutive Grey Cups (2008-19) that do not factor into this total. TSN also held NHL cable rights at the time, and he went on to handle more than two dozen games that year, but would not return to a conference final until 2008.
Rogers Communications’ 12-year national contract with the NHL took effect in the fall of 2014, and for the next six years, his only national work came in Canada’s more populous southern neighbor to the tune of 107 games for NBC and NBCSN.
Cuthbert departed TSN in June 2020, rejoining Rogers before that year’s pandemic-delayed playoffs resumed in August. “I’m getting old,” he told the Canadian Press that summer, when he noted that Rogers would hold exclusive national rights until just after his 69th birthday in 2026. “The opportunity to do more playoff hockey and to do hockey on Saturday nights was just too inviting."
That summer, he racked up 43 telecasts in 45 days from the Western Conference playoff bubble in Edmonton as the consolidated playoff schedule allowed broadcast talent to call games without traveling between cities and sometimes set up multiple games on the same day. He would go on to work the 2021 Stanley Cup Final after Jim Hughson cut back to only doing games in Vancouver and assumed the lead role when Cole retired that summer.
As a national play-by-play announcer, Cuthbert has worked with 80 partners, a list led by Scott Russell (264 times) and Craig Simpson (257). Seven other commentators (Greg Millen, Ray Ferraro, Kyle Bukauskas, John Garrett, Scott Oake, Glenn Healy, and Dick Irvin) have appeared with him at least 100 times.
Nevertheless, the game that Wikipedia calls Cuthbert’s breakthrough moment came when he flew solo in 1988. On April 18, CBC sent its lead crew to Game 1 of the Bruins-Canadiens series with Cuthbert stationed in Washington for updates and highlights of the Devils-Capitals game. A blackout smothered Montreal and much of Quebec that night, and while emergency power allowed the game at the Forum to finish, the telecast was unable to continue. That left Cuthbert and producer Jim Hough in Washington for the final two and a half hours of that game and would go on to earn the talent a Gemini award nomination from the Canadian Cinema and Television Academy.
At the team level, Cuthbert has called five of the NHL’s seven Canadian teams more than 200 times each, paced by the Maple Leafs (331) and Oilers (250). His most common American franchise is the Red Wings (112), with the Stars and Avalanche also appearing more than 100 times.
Cuthbert’s NHL career has taken him to 59 rinks, including 29 that were alternate sites or are now defunct; he has yet to call a national game from Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle or the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, although local telecasts may have taken him there. Scotiabank Arena in Toronto has hosted the most Cuthbert telecasts with 152, topping Northlands Coliseum (132) and the Olympic Saddledome. San Jose’s SAP Center edges Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena (39) for the most games in an American facility.
Cuthbert added to his total Wednesday night while we posted this article, handling a Blue Jackets-Maple Leafs telecast on Sportsnet with Simpson and Shawn McKenzie. At his current rate just north of 70 national telecasts a year, Cuthbert could reach Stockton’s total of 1,544 telecasts by the end of this season’s playoffs, with Cole’s mark of 1,723 next in line about two and a half years later.
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