To Mute Or Unmute

Sunday, February 28, 7:30 a.m.
Sometimes the story behind the story is worth telling. Or sometimes a writer needs something to write about when the team takes a day off. You decide.
On Saturday night, during our regular second intermission segment on ATT Sportsnet, Daren Millard and producer Braden Grieser had some fun at my expense.

The segment, which has been labelled Lawless and Order dating back to my time working for TSN in Canada, is based on a pretty simple blueprint. Early on the day of a game, an email goes out with a list of topics which might be discussed on the show that night. Sometimes there's a little back and forth, but we eventually settle on two pre-planned topics and wait for something in the game to tell us what we should talk about off the top.
The host is key and I've been lucky to work with three great ones; Dennis Beyak at TSN and mostly Dave Goucher and Millard at ATT Sportsnet. The host is supposed to tee up the ball and then, for better or worse, yours truly takes his best swipe at the ball. Sometimes it's a hook or a slice and we even whiff once in a while. Very rarely, it gets smashed right down the middle of the fairway.
Early Saturday, my email to Millard and Grieser was delivered. The plan was to discuss changes made to Golden Knights lines by head coach Pete DeBoer and his staff. The other pre-planned item was to focus on VGK rookie Dylan Coghlan and his ability to successfully make the first pass out of the defensive zone.
Midway through the second period, I sent a text to the host and producer suggesting our opening topic should be Alex Pietrangelo and the excellent game he was having.
All seemed normal, and with one minute left in the second period, I left Dan D'Uva and the radio broadcast to head up to the set where Millard hosts the pre-game, intermission and post-game show.
Immediately upon arrival, Millard looked at me and asked if I was in a good mood. Sure. We get paid to talk about hockey, there's never much of a reason to be grumpy. Millard asked for a second time, and then said he wanted to have some with me. My exact reply: "Fun away."
Millard then asked Grieser what he thought and should they go ahead with whatever plan they were hatching. My IFB (the cueing system used for the producer or director to talk to those on set) wasn't turned up so I couldn't hear what Braden was saying to Daren. Finally, Millard said, "let's do it."
The segment went fine. We talked about Pietrangelo and what we liked about the new lines. Then, as I'm running my points about Coghlan through my head, Millard says it's nice to hear my voice.
If you saw this on TV, you can see that I'm confused. Let's be honest, at 52 I have yet to master using my inside voice. I'm loud.
Then Millard explains to the TV audience that I've been muted on our daily Zoom calls with the coaches and players. At this point, I realized where he was going. It's true. Two days in a row while using the raise hand function to ask a question, when the moderator has come to me, I have been unable to unmute my computer quickly enough and they've moved on without me and I haven't been able to ask my question.
For the record, and no one is going to remember or care about this part, when the moderator has come to me, the unmute button has flashed on the screen and I've hit unmute. And then for some reason unknown to me, a second message asking me to enter my computer password has come on the screen. It's this second stage which takes too much time that has resulted in me becoming the butt of the coaching staff's jokes.
Back to Saturday night, Millard then cued up a clip from earlier in the week of DeBoer waiting for my question and then laughingly saying he's going to come over and show me how to unmute my computer.
When the clip ends and the camera returns to Millard and I live on set, the host is bent over laughing and my face is red with embarrassment.
Now, there are two choices here. Be a good sport or be a suck. I like to laugh. And if you look and walk and talk like me, you better figure out a way to laugh at yourself or life will quickly become tiresome.
Thankfully, my instinct was to be in on the joke and not make it worse. So, I explained my plight. How I could no longer ask questions, how the rest of the coaching staff was sending me jabs about my ability to unmute (who would have ever thought that would be considered a bad thing?), then I blamed Millard as the leader of some conspiracy to install a bug in my computer and then, finally, I attempted to storm off set but the combination of having to unbutton my suit, set down the microphone and unplug my IFB cord proved too much. Well, you have to see it.

By the time I got back to the radio studio to resume my color commentary duties for the third period, my Twitter timeline had exploded. And friends watching all around the hockey world were texting.
So that's the story behind this story.