Saturday 4 July 2015

TSN 690's Tony Marinaro - a modern day Ted Tevan

I had an opportunity to be an in-studio guest at TSN 690 Friday with Tony Marinaro on the Montreal Forum. Tony saw the blog I wrote, expressing dismay over the Canadiens trade of Brandon Prust to the Vancouver Canucks, and gave me an opportunity to speak out.

Tony is our modern-day Ted Tevan: opinionated, controversial and  always entertaining. On this day he had Sean Coleman in the house as his producer/sports update announcer and his well behaved young son Anthony, sporting a cast after breaking his wrist in a soccer game. Anthony, you should know, is an outstanding player and one day Tony might just have to retire to become his agent.
With Tony Marinaro (left) and Simon Tsalikis.  
When it comes to Montreal Canadiens talk, there are not too many people better than Tony to listen to. He is never afraid to criticize a move by management or the performance of a player and you can always count on him for breaking new stories. Did he agree with my opinion that trading Brandon Prust was a bad move?  Not completely. He wanted to know why I liked the player so much. Well, I explained, Prust reminds me of former Habs enforcer Chris Nilan – someone who can play hockey and drop the gloves to protect his teammates. He came to Montreal by choice and wanted to stay here, mainly because his fiancĂ©e Maripier Morin is from here and does not intend to leave due to her successful career on French TV.

Before Tony let me go, he provided one of his regular Twitter boosts. You see Tony has 33,000 Twitter followers and counting. That is the magic of talk radio. So many of your listeners are either sitting by their computers or smartphones that they will quickly “follow” you. I have surpassed the 1,600 mark, a far cry from Tony’s numbers, but nothing to be ashamed of.


TSN 690 remains a jewel within our midst, the voice of the Canadiens, Alouettes and Impact, always delivering breaking news and analysis. We almost lost them a few years ago, but as part of a rock solid Bell Media team which includes CJAD, CHOM, Virgin  Radio and CTV Montreal, they look pretty stable.While the likes of Marinaro, Mitch Melnick, Elliott Price, Sean Star, Rick Moffat and Nilan represent the marquee players, Shawn Campbell, Rod Francis, Mitch Gallo, Connor McKenna, Simon Tsalikis, Jessica Rusnak, Amanda Stein and others make for a strong supporting cast,

For sports fans in Montreal, there can be no greater gift.

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