My First Scar

Do you have hockey scars? I have only one, though I don't recall getting it.

I was about three and playing ball hockey in the driveway with the neighbour kids. As my mom remembers it, I ran inside crying and bleeding from the corner of my left eye. The game must have gotten crazy, or maybe it was just because I was a motor-mouthed hyperactive kid who hadn't developed proper balancing skills yet: I had apparently ran into the brick corner of our garage.

My mom patched me up, the tears soon stopped, and I started to run back outside.

"Where are you going?" my mom asked.

I yelled back, "I gotta finish the game!"

It's what Don Cherry would call a "Good Ol' Canadian Boy" moment — but sadly, I don't have one that relates to actual ice.

Why?

I never played the game.

Although I did fantasize about scoring the Stanley Cup–winning goal (and I still do), it never really bothered me that I didn't play "real" hockey because deep down, I knew I wasn't destined to be a star athlete. I wanted something different.

In Anchorman, there's a scene where Ron Burgundy comes on the TV at a bar, and a biker shouts, "Hey, everybody! Shut the hell up! Ron Burgundy's on!" That is exactly the way Don Cherry and Ron MacLean were treated at my house during my childhood. I remember watching "Coach's Corner" as a kid — whether it was with my parents, aunts, uncles, and other family members, the reaction was the same.

Ron and Don would appear on the TV during the first intermission and yell and scream at each other. There's no way I understood what the hell they were talking about; what I was paying attention to, even at the age of four or five, was how the adults reacted.

From one rant to another, my family would go from laughing at Ron and Don to laughing with them. That was fascinating to me. Every Saturday, Ron and Don had the attention of millions around the country. More importantly from my little perspective, they had the attention of every adult in my house. As a kid, all you want is for adults to pay attention to you and take you seriously. So to me, that was just as incredible as any Doug Gilmour goal, any Wendel Clark hit, or any Felix Potvin flashy glove save.

Fast forward about a quarter of a century to spring 2017, and I'm sitting in a restaurant in Whitby, Ontario, with three friends. I look up and Ron and Don are talking about Jarome Iginla on "Coach's Corner." At least that's what I assumed they were talking about because the sound was off.

A few minutes later, I looked down at my phone. I had text messages from 17 different people, missed calls, voicemails, and a bunch of notifications.

I'm not even kidding when I say my first thought was that somebody had died.

"OMG CALL ME RIGHT NOW!" my wife messaged me. About a dozen messages from others were some variation of "HOLY SHIT!!!"

Ron MacLean had said my name on "Coach's Corner" live on Hockey Night in Canada. Apparently, he had seen a video that I had made for Sportsnet about how Jarome Iginla should have been named one of the NHL's top 100 players of all time.

"We've never met Steve Dangle, but he said he should have been one of the 100," Ron said.

"Who?" Don interrupted.

"Steve Dangle. He's on Hockey Central every weeknight," Ron explained.

Don then went off about how ludicrous it was that Evgeni Malkin wasn't one of the top 100 either, but I had got what I needed.

So how the hell did it happen?

Whether you're a fan of mine, you can't stand me, or you have no idea who the hell I am, I want to give you my sincerest thanks for picking up this book. Time is precious and every single day there are new ways for us to spend it. The fact that you would choose to spend some time reading this book or listening to my manic hockey rants is truly an honour.

I love reading books or hearing stories from hockey broadcasters about how they got to where they are. Most of them, however, tend to be older — in their 50s, 60s, 70s — and are accomplished individuals who have led interesting lives.

While I don't have the profile of those guys, and I haven't been on national television for three decades, and, in fact, I only started writing this book at the ripe age of 29, just three short years after moving out of my parents' house, I'm in the thick of it right now, trying to establish myself in sports media — an industry that appears to be shrinking by the day.

If you are looking to pursue a career in sports, broadcasting, or anything else for that matter, my hope is that you will find the stories of me desperately trying over and over again to get my foot in the sports broadcasting door relatable and proof that you should never give up. I'll also tell you all of the dumb mistakes I've made while trying to stick said foot in said door. Hopefully you'll read about my silly mistakes and learn from them. If nothing else, hopefully you'll laugh.

And if you're not looking to work in sports media, I hope this gives you an idea of what people are going through right now as they try to establish their own career and identity. You may even relate to many of the stories in this book; even though industries and technology change, humans are still just human ...

Some of us just yell louder than others.

The Jump to North America

My family's story begins outside of Canada, which makes it extremely Canadian.

More than 100 years ago, my great-grandfather on my dad's side was an orphan in England. Because we don't know who his parents were, there's a natural mystery about his origin. The rumour within the family is that he's a royal bastard — not a bad-guy bastard, a literal bastard. It goes like this: King Edward VII had a child with a chambermaid and that child is my great-grandfather. Look, I'm just relaying the story my family told me, OK?

Obviously we couldn't prove that. Photos of my grandpa as a young man look quite a bit like King George V's son, King George VI, but that's hardly evidence.

However, my great-grandfather did attend an expensive naval academy, despite growing up in an orphanage. Who paid for that? I was...