As it turns out, Kelly Hrudey wasn’t the lone Hockey Night in Canada stalwart absent from Sportsnet’s Saturday night broadcast this season. Jennifer Botterill, a Hockey Hall of Famer and three-time Olympic champion who distinguished herself as the sole woman on the show’s studio panel for more than half a decade, won’t be returning either.
Hrudey addressed his exit publicly, revealing in an Aug. 5 video that Sportsnet had notified him in June that his contract would lapse without renewal. Botterill’s departure only came to light when Sportsnet introduced the studio ensemble for its newly rebranded Saturday Night Hockey on Sept. 9, which saw Colby Armstrong inherit her chair beside Kevin Bieksa, Elliotte Friedman, and veteran host Ron MacLean when the program launches Oct. 3, spearheading a weekly doubleheader that ensures at least one Canadian franchise in every contest.
Both departures arrive during a tumultuous year for Canada’s most storied hockey broadcast. In June, Sportsnet and CBC jointly announced that the public broadcaster would stop carrying NHL games, ending a partnership that stretched back to 1952. CBC has carried Hockey Night in Canada through a sublicensing arrangement ever since Rogers captured exclusive national rights with a 12-year, $5.2 billion deal in 2013. And while Sportsnet extended its pact with the league for another 12 years and $11 billion in 2025, CBC’s standing within that future remained conspicuously unresolved. The public broadcaster ultimately elected to double down on its Olympic commitments, vowing to supplant the telecast with a new Saturday primetime showcase devoted to Canadian athletes.
The upheaval soon extended to the broadcast’s on-air ranks. Hrudey, a 15-year NHL netminder who first graced Hockey Night in Canada while still an active player, scrutinizing his fellow goaltenders in its “Behind the Mask” segment, confirmed in August that his 28-year tenure had concluded, a verdict that also stripped him of his seat in the Calgary Flames’ regional booth after 12 seasons. Scott Oake, who presided over the show’s After Hours segment for more than two decades, had already retired in April. And mere days after Hrudey’s announcement, Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi was discontinued after an 18-year run.
Now, less than two weeks after Sportsnet revealed its overhauled panel, Botterill has confirmed she’ll join the NHL on TNT this season, per The Globe and Mail’s Rachel Brady. Botterill, who has previously shouldered both studio and in-game responsibilities for TNT, said she’ll predominantly operate from the booth this time around. TNT is expected to formally unveil its broadcast plans later this week.
As recently as May, Botterill called a second-round Stanley Cup Playoffs game in Philadelphia for TNT alongside Alex Faust and, of all people, Armstrong. And in February, NBC bestowed upon her a prominent assignment at the Milano-Cortina Olympics, the first Winter Games to feature NHL players since 2014, designating her as its inside-the-glass analyst for the women’s tournament alongside AJ Mleczko and Kenny Albert, who were calling their seventh Winter Olympics.
It’s unclear which TNT crew Botterill will be deployed with, or how substantial her workload will be this season. But as of Wednesday, we do know that she’ll be in the booth for TNT’s first preseason broadcast on Friday, when the Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild meet at 8 p.m. ET on TNT, truTV and HBO Max. Joining her will be play-by-play voice John Forslund, reporter Lauren Jbara, and, once again, Armstrong.