That’s all she wrote: Legendary play-by-play man Bob Cole makes final call

Legendary play-by-play man Bob Cole had to work overtime in his final game for “Hockey Night in Canada” on Saturday.

The Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs needed overtime and a shootout to decide the match which marked the last ever broadcast for the 85-year-old, who admitted it was hard to get his head arouind the fact he’s hanging up his microphone after 50 years.

“Mixed feelings, I guess,” the St. John’s, N.L. native recalled earlier in the week. “It’s starting to sink in. …It’s difficult.”

While there were tributes Saturday on TV and at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Cole said he prefered the focus remains on the ice.

“It’s going to end. Let it end,” he said. “The players are the game – not me.”

Cole, who moved to TV in 1973, saw his workload scaled back in recent years by Sportsnet and Rogers Media, which took over national television rights in 2013 – a deal that included a sub-licensing agreement to allow the CBC to continue airing HNIC.

He didn’t call any playoff games last spring for the first time in his career, and got 16 dates on the 2018-19 schedule.

“You have to feel the game – breathe it – the timing, the sounds you’re creating,” Cole said in the night’s taped opening. “When you get 20,000 (fans) roaring after a play, it’s perfect.”

“The great players are special people,” he added. “I’ve enjoyed that over the years. It’s a great privilege.”

Don Cherry praised Cole during his Coach’s Corner segment in the first intermission, which opened with archive footage of the pair.

“Foster (Hewitt) was good, Danny (Gallivan) was good,” Cherry said of Cole’s HNIC predecessors. “But the best of all, I think, and I’ve seen them all, is Bob Cole.”

Cole still remembers the butterflies flapping in his stomach as he walked into the old Boston Garden in the spring of 1969.

Calling games for “Hockey Night in Canada” was his dream. This was the opportunity, one he wasn’t about to let pass him by.

“Nervous as heck,” Cole recalled this week. “It was radio on the CBC network. Playoffs. It was something I always wanted to do. Now you’re asked to step up and you’re front and centre. If you’ve never done something like this, it’s hard to understand – you really wanted to do it, and here you are given a chance.

“You better do it. It’s a crazy world, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1996 as a recipient of the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award for broadcasting excellence, his personal highlights include the 1972 Summit Series on radio and the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City – “It’s going to be a break! It is Jooooooe Sakic … scores!” – when Canada won gold to snap a 50-year drought.

And then there’s his signature phrase, one that nearly every Canadian hockey fan associates with Cole.

“Ohhhh baby!”

“I used that many times, I’m told, at home growing up,” said Cole, who got his start with VOCM radio in St. John’s. “If you spilled some milk and your mother found out that you’ve made a mess, it’s: ‘Oh baby.'”

Asked if there’s any animosity with how his broadcasting career is coming to an end, Cole said that’s not the word he would choose.

“I respect what my superiors are doing,” he said. “There’s a lot of great talent working on our games now, but of course I’m disappointed. I always wanted to be involved.

“I’ve given it my best shot. I’m going to miss it.”