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Will Joe Bowen and Jim Ralph return to the Leafs' booth? Sportsnet, TSN aren't saying yet

Sportsnet and TSN will not confirm whether Joe Bowen and Jim Ralph are returning to the airwaves as radio play-by-play voices for the Maple Leafs next season, days after Bowen bid an emotional farewell to the listening audience as Toronto’s playoff run reached an abrupt conclusion.

The two veteran broadcasters have reached the end of their respective five-year contracts and have not reached a new agreement. Since the two networks share the local hockey rights, Bowen and Ralph have been calling games for both TSN Radio 1050 and Sportsnet 590 The Fan.

“Well, partner, 41 years of doing this — 3,550 games — and if this is the end of the line, it’s been a hell of a run for us,” Bowen said near the end of the broadcast on Friday night. “I’ve enjoyed every moment of it. Hopefully, we’ll be back next year, but we’re not sure of that yet.”

Bowen thanked Ralph and the production staff.

“It has been really, very, very special,” said Bowen, choking up behind the microphone. “It’s been quite a run. We’ll be with you. Alright? Love you.”

“We’re going for beers,” said Ralph. “Love you, too.”

The Leafs had just lost 3-2 in overtime to the Florida Panthers, dropping their second-round series in five games. Bowen added a note of melancholy as he signed off from TSN 1050: “And, maybe for the last time, Joe Bowen bidding you good night from the Scotiabank Arena.”

The Athletic asked spokespeople from both networks whether their radio stations planned to have both Bowen and Ralph on the air next season. In separate replies, the networks offered identical responses: “As always, we share our broadcast team details closer to the start of the season.”

A message to MLSE was not immediately returned.

Bowen and Ralph emerged as a social media cause for some Toronto fans earlier this spring. The radio stations had not regularly sent them on the road for games in three seasons, meaning whenever the Leafs were on the road, the broadcasters were calling the game off a TV screen at either TSN or Sportsnet.

Sometimes, with ambient crowd noise spliced into the call from Toronto, it would take a discerning ear to tell whether Bowen and Ralph were on-site. At other times — especially if there was a technical glitch — they would not be shy in telling the audience they were still in Toronto.

The issue finally came to a boil at the end of Toronto’s first-round playoff series with Tampa Bay. It had been 19 years since the Leafs had won a playoff round, meaning it had been almost two decades since a series-winning moment presented itself for Bowen.

Captain John Tavares scored the overtime winner in Game 6 to eliminate the Lightning, but the camera followed defenceman Morgan Rielly as he celebrated. Bowen, sitting with Ralph in Toronto, fell under the influence of the camera shot, and wrongly credited Rielly with the goal.

It was soon announced — through an MLSE spokesperson — that Bowen and Ralph would return to the road in the second round. They were in Florida for Games 3 and 4 and would have been back for a Game 6 had the Leafs made it that far.

The radio voices used to travel with the team on the charter flight. That changed when general manager Lou Lamoriello removed the broadcasters from the plane — not while it was in flight — just before the 2015-16 season began.

Faced with the increased costs of flying commercial, the two networks made plans to keep Bowen and Ralph in Toronto when the team hit the road. A social media uproar followed, and the crew was sent on the road again that season.

The pandemic shifted that balance again. Travel restrictions grounded play-by-play voices and helped audiences normalize the idea of remote broadcasting. Bowen and Ralph have not always been alone at home, either.

Ben Wagner, the radio play-by-play voice of the Blue Jays, has also been calling road games from the Sportsnet office space in Toronto. Earlier this season, a fire alarm in Toronto could be heard while he was on the air — broadcasting a game being played in St. Louis. (“It was a false alarm,” Rogers Sports & Media spokesperson Jason Jackson wrote in an email to The Canadian Press. “All is OK.”)

Ralph is a former minor-league goaltender who signed on as a radio colour analyst with Toronto in 1997 and has been a fixture in the booth with Bowen.

“There’s ups and downs,” Ralph said in a 2019 interview with The Athletic. “You get on each other’s nerves sometimes. But there’s a mutual respect and a genuine friendship that goes with it.”

Bowen was 31 when he moved to Toronto, in 1982, when he became what was reported at the time to be only the fifth radio play-by-play voice in franchise history. A report in The Globe and Mail suggested he beat out nine other candidates for the job.

“Sometimes I go to the booth early, all by myself, and I sit and I think about all the people who would give their eye teeth to be in my position,” Bowen told The Toronto Star in 1989. “It’s so easy to become jaded in this business … That will never happen to me. I get excited, I get upset, I’m as much a fan as anybody.”

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(Photo of Jim Ralph, left, and Joe Bowen: Courtesy of Joe Bowen)