Canada's Best Hockey Broadcaster Is Building A Lake Cabin With His Bare Hands, Just Waiting For A Call

There's no hockey, as you may have heard. This means NBC's Doc Emrick, one of our favorites, is calling figure skating for the peacock network. But what about Jim Hughson of the CBC? Hughson—whose best Roberto-Luongo-specific calls you can hear above—is another one of our favorites. Unlike Emrick, whose style is all verbs and peaks-and-valleys, Hughson is all voice. The man has the timbre of a an alien boxing announcer. Give him a name with a lot of vowel sounds—"Luongo" is a good one, although "Kopitar" is my favorite—and his theatrics'll give you chills.

Anyway, Emrick is getting paid while hockey's gone. Hughson isn't, reports the Edmonton Sun. He's building a still to slow down the time:

So instead of calling goals and assists for Hockey Night in Canada every Saturday night, play-by-play man Jim Hughson is left to score points on the home front, tackling some major renovation work at the lake.

"I hope they get a deal done, I'm tired of being a construction guy," said Hughson, who's killing the time by building a guest cabin next to his own. "I started it in late August when it really started to look like I wasn't going back to work right away." [...]

"I haven't lost any fingers yet, but I do know that I'm not cut out for construction work," he said with a chuckle. "Level and square are not really parts of my vernacular. I'm not very good with a hammer and I'm not very good with a saw because I'm afraid of them, so ..."

We love Hughson because his hockey calls are magically demented. That means we really don't like the idea of him spending a whole lot of time with power tools. For the love of god, get a deal done, NHL.

Loss of hockey hammers Jim Hughson [Edmonton Sun]