Voice of the Leafs looks back on 44 years of broadcast memories ahead of final season tribute

Ahead of an in-game tribute next week marking his final season, Joe Bowen, the longtime voice of the Toronto Maple Leafs, recalls the origin of his most iconic on-air expression.

As his dad told it, Bowen said, Joe was a fussing newborn when he first heard what would become his catch phrase. He said his father was holding him, trying to calm him down, as Foster Hewitt’s voice came over the airwaves to announce Toronto’s Bill Barilko had just scored to win the Stanley Cup. That’s when his dad yelled out.

“Holy Mackinaw!”

His dad would go on to repeat it regularly, Bowen said, when they’d watch the Leafs together and their favourite player, Johnny Bower, would make a dazzling save. And he eventually brought it into his play-by-play vocabulary.

Bowen, 74, is now in his 44th and final season as the Leafs’ radio commentator, a job he landed in 1982, when some of the players still went without helmets and Toronto’s cup drought was in its adolescence. Since then, he has broadcast nearly 4,000 games — calling the names of over 700 Maple Leafs, by his own estimation.

But this summer, he decided this season would be his last.

The Maple Leafs organization plans to honour Bowen with a tribute night Tuesday when the Leafs host the Chicago Blackhawks at Scotiabank Arena. Ahead of the festivities, Bowen sat down with CBC Toronto to talk about his four-plus decades as the voice of the Buds, and how it feels to be approaching his final sign-off.

44 years of Leafs memories

With more than half the regular season left, “and then a long playoff run that we are counting on as well,” Bowen said he’s not thinking about the end quite yet. But he said he figures Tuesday night will be emotional, and the finality will really start to set in come springtime.

“At this point I’m just enjoying it,” he said, adding that he’s still hopeful he’ll get to see the Leafs lift the cup once before he’s done, despite a lacklustre start this year.

Before the Maple Leafs, Bowen spent a decade calling games for his hometown Sudbury Wolves and the now-defunct Nova Scotia Voyageurs. Calling games for Toronto was far beyond his ambitions, he said.

“I dreamt about being here, but in uniform, like every other kid,” he said. “When it opened up and I got the chance, I was just hoping I could get one game under my belt, let alone 3,800.”

Some of his highlights, he said, were calling three conference finals, Nikolai Borschevsky’s Game 7 overtime winner against Detroit in 1993, and meeting Auston Matthews’ parents immediately after the star’s debut four-goal game in 2016, then watching them tear up as he played back his calls of their son’s first NHL goals.

WATCH | Joe Bowen’s call of Borschevsky’s Game 7 winner:

Bowen also received the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award for outstanding contributions as a hockey broadcaster back in 2018.

Leafs players like Jonathan Tavares, who grew up in Mississauga listening to Bowen, say he’s a special part of the organization.

“You listen to him growing up and whatnot, and now he’s calling your name, and you’re part of the club. And it’s pretty cool,” he said.

Bowen has a unique talent for letting his voice rise and fall with the importance and drama of each play, said Jim Ralph, Bowen’s broadcast partner of 29 years.

As a fan and a friend, Ralph said he’s “in denial” that Bowen is retiring.

“I’m just trying to maybe enjoy each game a little more,” he said. “When your job is to sit with a buddy and call hockey games and laugh for 29 years, that’s a pretty good gig … It’s gone by so fast.”

Bowen said he’ll still be around the organization next year as an alumnus. It will be tough to be out of the press box, he said, “but I know it’s time.”