John Garrett obit

John Garrett: A broadcasting legend and a legendary human

John Garrett, marvellous entertainer, fine hockey player and all around good human died Tuesday at 74

 He was not on the list.

The always-at-ease, always-ready-to-laugh persona he presented on television was his true self. He was kind and generous. He cared for the people around him.

Those are base qualities for success in life and for success in the public sphere in general.

If he hadn’t been a funny goalie or funny broadcaster, maybe he’d have been a musician.

When he was young, his mother Marvel signed him and his six siblings — Joan, Bert, Evelyn, Eldon, Greg and Murdoch — up for piano lessons. She knew that it would get her kids credits for school, but she also knew it would serve them well in life.

So young John did his mother proud and got his grade 8 piano certification from the Royal Conservatory of Music. And he got his grade 2 in theory, too.

It became something of a lifelong habit; in 2020, with people mostly staying home to slow the spread of COVID-19, the man we know as Cheech got serious about his piano playing again. Years before, he’d given his daughter Krista his old piano. A couple years ago his family bought him a new keyboard and when the world stopped in March 2020, he started playing his piano more seriously again.

Musical talent is a family tradition: his younger brother Greg worked as a music teacher and still leads a choir in Ontario.

John Garrett, marvellous entertainer, fine hockey player and all around good human died Tuesday at 74 of what are believed to be natural causes. He had been in Utah to cover the Utah Mammoth vs. Vegas Golden Knights playoff series. Sportsnet announced his passing on Wednesday morning.

Along with daughters Sarah, Krista — and her children — he leaves his wife Sharon, his partner of more than 50 years.

Born June 17, 1951 in Trenton, Ont., he grew up in the small community of Glenn Miller just outside of Trenton. His father was also named John and was a school teacher and principal; mother Marvel was a homemaker.

Even as his parents pushed him academically, he proved to be an excellent goalie and played two seasons of Jr. A hockey for the Peterborough Petes, starting when he was 18. After two seasons of junior hockey he was drafted by the St. Louis Blues in 1971.

He played a seasons in the Blues’ system, but never got a sniff of NHL action as the Blues opted to give a series of NHL journeymen starts over the young goalie. Before the 1972-73 season, he was traded to the Chicago Blackhawks, but with the NHL club well-staffed in goal by Tony Esposito and Gary Smith, there wasn’t much hope for Garrett here either. Rather than being farmed out to the Blackhawks’ top farm team in Dallas, he split the season between the AHL’s Richmond Barons, who were actually the top affiliate of the Philadelphia Flyers, and the WHL’s Portland Buckaroos, a club filled with veteran pros who had long ago given up on their NHL dreams.

And so when the World Hockey Association’s Minnesota Fighting Saints came calling in the summer of 1973, he jumped.

The upstart league had the players at heart, he always argued. Rare were the opportunities in the NHL for 22 year old goalies like Garrett, but in Minnesota he quickly grew into a star. His first season he split starts evenly with Mike Curran. The next season, 1974-75, he made the bulk of the starts and helped the Fighting Saints make the semifinals where they lost to the eventual Avco Cup runners-up the Quebec Nordiques. Playing goal for Quebec was Garrett’s future Vancouver Canucks teammate Richard Brodeur.

The WHA may have revolutionized professional hockey by bringing in teenagers and signing star players to huge contracts, but by Garrett’s third season in Minnesota, the seams were starting to burst. The Saints drew strong crowds but struggled to sell much more than tickets. Despite not having a TV deal and minimal support from the business community — the NHL’s North Stars drew most of the attention — Saints ownership spent big on player salaries.

Eventually the money ran out; the team was confirmed as bankrupt as 1975 came to a close. The players voted to play on but went without pay for six weeks. After receiving just one paycheque in 1976, the team voted to not board a flight to Cincinnati on Feb. 28, 1976. That proved to be the end of the Saints. The team’s better players quickly found themselves scattered across the league; in Garrett’s case he landed with the Toronto Toros, who would become the Birmingham Bulls. After two seasons in the south, he joined the New England Whalers.

Re-branded as the Hartford Whalers, they would be one of the four teams to survive the collapse of the WHA in 1979 and jump to the NHL. After eight seasons as a pro, Garrett had finally made the NHL.

He played six NHL seasons in all, first with the Whalers, then with the Nordiques and finally with the Canucks. For the rest of his life he would speak up for what the WHA did for hockey, pointing directly to his own experience as a young player.

“It was a chance for the game to expand for sure. But for players’ rights, after the WHA, in the ’80s and ’90s, look at the rights and freedoms that the players started to get. They were all created because there was a rival league and you got to choose,” he told Postmedia in 2023. “Like in my case I’m playing behind Tony Esposito and Gary Smith, so it’s, ‘Oh, yeah, you go and play in Dallas, go play in Dallas for two or three years. And if one of those guys screw-up, well, then we’ll give it a chance.’

“And the 18-year-old draft and instead of, ‘Ah well, we’re not going to draft anybody till they’re 20 because then we don’t have to pay to develop.’ The owners had all the rights. And then the WHA came in.”

His arrival in Vancouver is well-told but remains hilarious. With the Canucks lacking an experienced backup to Richard Brodeur, GM Harry Neale traded for Garrett on Feb. 4, 1983. The Canucks faced the Toronto Maple Leafs the following night; Brodeur took a shot in the side of the head, damaging his eardrum. Garrett stepped in and then started the next night in New Jersey.

Brodeur had been named as the Canucks’ representative for the NHL All-Star game two days later, but clearly couldn’t play. The timing of his injury, plus the NHL’s policy of having each team represented by at least one player meant that the easiest solution was to simply name Garrett as Brodeur’s replacement, even though he’d only been a Canuck for three days.

Garrett very nearly stole the show on a Tuesday night in Long Island and looked set to win the MVP for the game until Wayne Gretzky erupted for four goals in the third period. The powers that be had no choice but to award the Great One the game MVP, which came with a car as a prize.

After Garrett’s time as a colour commentator on Canucks broadcasts came to an end in 2023, he was honoured by the city of Vancouver with a John Garrett Day. (Ken Sim, mayor of the time, was a high school pal of Garrett’s broadcast teammate John Shorthouse).

As part of the ceremony, Garrett was given a plaque, which partly read: “Wayne Gretzky is a puck hog and stole all the glory and a Pontiac Firebird from John.” When the plaque was unveiled, there were guffaws. The meal served that day, was, of course, his favourite meal: burgers and fries.

The day also happened to be McHappy Day, which led Garrett to quip to Postmedia: “It’s John Garrett McHappy Day.”

Garrett retired as a player in 1985 and was briefly hired by Harry Neale to be his assistant general manager, but Neale was fired weeks later and new GM Jack Gordon didn’t carry on with the AGM plan, so Garrett, still under contract, was relegated to third-string goalie duty, showing up to practices but left with not much else to do. Late in the season he was sent back to AHL Fredericton where he played the final three games of his career.

The next fall, Hockey Night in Canada’s John Shannon tapped Garrett to be a broadcaster. He was a quick study. Shannon told him to just tell the viewers what he knew best. He quickly realized that personality was also an important skill for a colour commentator and by the time he arrived full-time on Canucks broadcasts in 2002, he had polished his routine.

Working first with Jim Hughson and then later, most famously, John Shorthouse, he won the hearts of Canucks fans. His love of ketchup, of burgers and fries, of meeting with fans, became legendary.

He was always ready to share time with everyone who met him. He’d always express delight when fans would show up with his 1985-86 O-Pee-Chee hockey card, which depicted him in his goalie gear but noted “now assistant general manager” on the front. The silliness of the scene was fitting for a guy who became known so much for his personality.

Shorthouse once called him the best teammate he ever had. Sportsnet host Dan Murphy, who served as their off-ice chaperon for years and was with Garrett in Utah, covering the Vegas-Utah series, said his friend was in great spirits till the very end.

After Garrett’s passing, stories have been shared widely by colleagues and fans alike, all highlighting what a kind person he was.

He will be missed.

 

Born    June 17, 1951

Trenton, Ontario, Canada

Died    April 27, 2026 (aged 74)

Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.

Height 5 ft 8 in (173 cm)

Weight 175 lb (79 kg; 12 st 7 lb)

Position           Goaltender

Caught Left

Played for        WHA

Minnesota Fighting Saints

Toronto Toros

Birmingham Bulls

New England Whalers

NHL

Hartford Whalers

Quebec Nordiques

Vancouver Canucks