{"id":20289,"date":"2026-04-15T19:49:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T02:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/bye-bye-joe\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T19:49:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T02:49:11","slug":"bye-bye-joe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/bye-bye-joe\/","title":{"rendered":"Bye bye, Joe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toronto Maple Leafs 1 – 3 Ottawa Senators<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Leafs' season has been over for a while now and a six game losing streak coming into this game sealed their fate. The season has sputtered to a disappointing end. It seemed to just fall apart from the very beginning with lots of two goal leads surrendered early in the season. I blame the departure of Mitch Marner, but the late season injury to Auston Matthews did help. And then down the stretch, goalie Stolarz hurt his knee. So tonight Hildby was in net, a bunch of young guys were out there and Knies, Nylander, Tavares, Cowan, Ekman-Larson, Benoit and McCabe played their last games of the season with them.<\/p>\n

It didn't look like the Leafs would score at all during the night, but Joe Bowen and Jim Ralph did their best on the radio call in the third period to jinx the shutout. At 11:48 of the third period, the spell worked and William Nylander sneaked a backhander into the net to elicit one final "Holy Mackinaw" After 44 years, Joe Bowen is retiring. and THAT was the reason to tune in tonight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

"Holy Mackinaw" was his trademark. We all knew it. The Rheostatics built it into the chorus of a famous song.<\/a>\u00a0Joe made culture, and that phrase was a shibboleth for nearly forty years of Leaf culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bowen called games for 44 years. Seventeen coaches, more than 700 players, thousands of goals; all got name checked by him. \u00a0From a Walt Podubny goal in Detroit (which started a three goal comeback) to Nylander's poached goal tonight, Bowen called some of the best and worst years of the Leafs. \u00a0Here's a selection of his best calls.<\/a> My favourites are from 2002 playoffs, when the Leafs held on to a 4-3 lead against Ottawa Game 6 and in the subsequent series where they scored late against Carolina in Game 6 which tied the game and gave them a chance in the series. That team had some grit, and Joe liked nothing better than watching a group of Toronto Maple Leafs putting in a shift by playing out of their skins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since I was thirteen years old Joe Bowen has been the voice of the Leafs. For this century, he has been accompanied by Jim Ralph, and the two of them were as much a comedic duo as they were a commentary team. \u00a0They love each other and Bowen's tribute to Ralphie and his thanks tonight was the most emotional moment of the night. \u00a0"Thank you for your encyclopedic knowledge and lack of math skills. I love you," he said through tears. \u00a0And Ralph returned the tribute in kind. \u00a0<\/p>\n

I have the heart of a traditionalist. \u00a0I appreciate things that just stay the same. I'm in Niagara-on-the-Lake this week, revelling in an Ontario spring, serenaded by the cardinals and the blue jays and rocked by an April thunderstorm. It seems to be as it always was. And here I'm listening to the Leafs' final game of 2025-26 and the last call ever by the guy whose voice is as closely tied to this team as the birds and weather are tied to this landscape. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Plus ca change… Toronto\u00a0has never won a Stanley Cup in my lifetime and as we say in Leafs-land, there is always next year. But this time, it will never be the same.<\/p>\n

Thanks Joe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto Maple Leafs 1 – 3 Ottawa Senators The Leafs' season has been over for a while now and a six game losing streak coming into this game sealed their fate. The season has sputtered to a disappointing end. It seemed to just fall apart from the very beginning with lots of two goal leads surrendered early in the season. I blame the departure of Mitch Marner, but the late season injury to Auston Matthews did help. And then down the stretch, goalie Stolarz hurt his knee. So tonight Hildby was in net, a bunch of young guys were out …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-5hf","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}