TORONTO – Mid-way through announcing the end of professional hockey’s 113 day lockout, TSN Sportscentre anchor Darren ‘Dutchy’ Dutchyshen broke down in tears, declaring it “the end of [his] professional nightmare.”
“There are a lot of hard jobs out there,” Dutchy elaborated. “Fireman, police officers, those guys who clean out the porta potties of a construction site. But I challenge anyone, to find a job tougher than doing a 60-minute sports only broadcast without being able to spend at least 40-minutes doing highlights, analysis and commentary on hockey. Today that impossible burden has been lifted off my shoulders.”
Off air, Dutchyshen and his fellow anchors admitted they found it particularly difficult to adjust to the new sports TSN was forced to cover in the absence of hockey. “We had to do full five-minute segments on the National Lacrosse League,” said colleague Jennifer Hedger. “Even National Lacrosse League players don’t spend five-minutes talking about lacrosse games.”
“I had to learn how to properly pronounce the last names of fucking soccer players,” sniffed a still emotional Dutchyshen.
Attempts by TSN to focus coverage on minor league hockey apparently did little to ease Dutchyshen’s suffering. “All do respect to the minor league kids, a lot of them will be great pros one day, but it’s hard not to feel like a fraudster when you’re trying to convince the audience that one of the biggest sports news stories of the night involved a match between the Peterborough Petes and the goddamn Erie Otters.”
On Sunday, at last, Dutchyshen was able to breathe an audible sigh of relief. It was to be short lived however as, upon being informed that, in 6 short months, the NHL season would over once again, Dutchy immediately collapsed to the floor and began hyperventilating while murmuring “nothing but baseball” over and over again.
