Ron MacLean was waiting to catch an early plane to Vancouver on Friday morning and after many years of putting into context the most important hockey games of our lives was still struggling on how to most meaningfully open next week's big telecast from Yellowknife.

"I like to open the telecast with a feel of where we are," the host of Scotiabank Hockey Day in Canada on Sportsnet explained. "This time I find it really fascinating. I have friends in Yellowknife and I've visited before, so it isnSA国际影视传媒檛 like I don't have a sense of the community. I've been around Frame Lake for summertime visits.

"But I have just been struggling mightily for weeks on end to find the right metaphor.

"I want to open with honouring the mix of the Indigenous story and the colonials coming and exploring in search of the Northwest Passage or in search of riches and rock."

Hockey Day in Canada will roll into Yellowknife from Feb. 5 to 8 as part of

Wednesday will see a multi-act music concert at the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre with the Bidiniband, Tara Slone, Digawolf, Wesley Hardisty, the Yellowknives Dene Drummers and Karen Novak. It will be closed out by NHL Hall of Famer Bryan Trottier.

There will also be a Scotiabank Hockey Day in Canada banquet at St. Patrick/Weledeh gym on Thursday, a celebrity/alumni hockey game at the Multiplex on Friday evening and the main event Hockey Day in Canada show itself which will attempt to tell stories in "an inspirational way of how we come to the game,"  MacLean said.

Details about planned travel to Norman Wells and Deline on Feb. 3 and 4 as part of the festivities were not available Friday.

Yellowknife is the third of three northern territorial capitals - and the 20th community overall- to host the event since its inception in 2000. Iqaluit had host the role in 2003 and Whitehorse had it in 2011.

MacLean said the one symbol of the community about Yellowknife that keeps coming back to him is Georges Erasmus. This became apparent especially after reading John Ralston Saul's , which honours the longtime Yellowknives Dene leader's involvement as co-chair of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and leading Canada toward the Truth and Reconciliation era.

"The one symbol for me for me so far is Georges Erasmus because he kind of represents the idea that you go to discover something and you find what was there all along was this treasure chest which is Georges Erasmus and what he was able to accomplish with the Report on Aboriginal Affairs that led to Truth and Reconciliation," he said.

Don Cherry

MacLean has been well-known for decades working opposite Don Cherry during Coach's Corner and commentating during intermission on Hockey Night in Canada. In November, over his now infamous

for not calling out Cherry's comments. Cherry did not, but later admitted he should have used different words.

Asked what he thought the chances would be that he would ever get back together with Cherry, MacLean said it was out of his hands.

"It would be a miracle but it is certainly out of my hands," he said. "As I have kept articulating, Don made a choice and it is a question you have to ask him of him why he didnSA国际影视传媒檛 go along with what was asked.

"My big thing in this is that I need to try to maintain everyoneSA国际影视传媒檚 dignity and it is a challenge. But that is the conundrum of life when you have to choose between two good things."  

MacLean admits that the Hockey Day in Canada program has unexpectedly become very popular during the latter portion of his career.

"I think the biggest thing about (Hockey Day) is that when we started in 2000 in Toronto, I had thought at the time that it was a lovely idea and that we would do some grassroots storytelling and after maybe two or three years it would run its course," he said. "It ended up being just the opposite. WeSA国际影视传媒檙e now at 20 years and weSA国际影视传媒檝e even extended it by doing Rogers Hometown Hockey on Sundays."

He said the event has attempted to bring grassroots community hockey stories to the national limelight in a way that wasnSA国际影视传媒檛 possible - or at least wasnSA国际影视传媒檛 done - earlier in his career.

SA国际影视传媒淲hen I started at Hockey Night in Canada in 1986, I remember back then that things were simpler,SA国际影视传媒� he said. SA国际影视传媒淭here was no Internet and no social media. National Hockey League players were just so excited and would come to us commentators asking which game is being seen where. They wanted to know if the national broadcast was being seen in their hometown and they would get a kick out of whether their town was being put on the map by (their) presence in the game.SA国际影视传媒�

Today, Hockey Day in Canada has extended the national broadcast's reach to get to deeper, more local stories and shine those communities' realities back to the national stage. The end effect is that the program is able to show how the communities shape the players just as much as professional hockey players have put some places on the map.

SA国际影视传媒淚t is just hard to imagine, as an example, how it happens that two kids come from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia - Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon," he said. "How do two kids come from the same little nook and end up commanding the national hockey stage?

"The dream is alive in all of those types of places, whether it is for the men to reach the NHL or the women to make it to the Olympic program or national team. A few find a way."

In YellowknifeSA国际影视传媒檚 case, MacLean was enthusiastic about telling the stories of Riley Oldford, founder of Yellowknife Sledge Hockey and emphasizing figures who have their namesakes on two Yellowknife Minor Hockey tournaments - the .

"The Riley Oldford story, as an example, his dad said 'when sledge hockey found Riley, he had a pack to follow or a lead to follow,'" he said. "That to me was a great line that will come up early in the show (next Saturday). That for me right there was the idea of inclusivity in what the sport brings. Because it is so high profile in our country, it is a sport where you can say- that is Canadian."

Bringing hockey heroes 

MacLean said there is also the exciting aspect of being able to connect in a real way with some hockey heroes who have traditionally been mediated through radio or television to Canadian communities. He said he hopes that he can replicate the exhilaration he felt as a young person when NHL Hall of Famer Bobby Hull visited Whitehorse where he lived for five years.

SA国际影视传媒淲hen Bobby Hull visited, I remember the excitement level and it was not unlike when Pierre Elliot Trudeau came,SA国际影视传媒� he said. SA国际影视传媒淵ou make it a first-hand experience. Everything you have been listening to on the radio or watching on television suddenly becomes a nice, comfortable first-hand experience. That has been the great idea and the discovery of Scotiabank Hockey Day in Canada.SA国际影视传媒�

Past Hockey Day in Canada events 

Swift Current, SK (2019)
Corner Brook, NL (2018)
Kenora, ON (2017)
Kamloops, B.C. (2016)
Halifax (2015)
Lloydminster, AB/SK (2014)
Peterborough, ON (2013)
Summerside, PEI (2012)
Whitehorse (2011)
Stratford, ON (2010)
Campbellton, NB (2009)
Winkler, MB (2008)
Nelson, BC (2007)
Stephenville, NL, (2006)
Shaunavon, SK (2004)
Iqaluit, NU (2003)
Windsor, NS. (2002)
Red Deer, AB (2001)
Toronto (2000)