Paul Romanuk

Paul Romanuk (born October 31, 1961) is a Toronto sportscaster and writer.

He was born in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada.

Romanuk did television play-by-play for the Toronto Maple Leafs and the NHL on Sportsnet.

Raised in Oshawa, Romanuk grew up a hockey fan, playing road hockey and watching Hockey Night in Canada.

He would simultaneously develop a fondness for sportscasting by watching hockey games called by HNIC's play-by-play announcer Danny Gallivan.

Furthermore, the youngster also followed Bill Hewitt's announcing work as well as Dan Kelly's whose broadcasts he listened to on KMOX out of St. Louis.

Despite growing up 60 km from Toronto, in the 1970s, young Romanuk became a fan of the Montreal Canadiens whom he took a liking to by watching CBC's Peterborough-based CHEX-TV channel 12 affiliate, which usually carried HNIC`s national feed that often featured Canadiens games called by his broadcasting hero Gallivan, alongside colour commentator Dick Irvin Jr., while, in contrast, CBLT-TV channel 6, the CBC's flagship station in Toronto, carried Toronto Maple Leafs games called by Bill Hewitt and Brian McFarlane.

Stating to have been "as much in love with Gallivan as I was with the Habs", Romanuk considers the broadcaster to be as much a part of the 1970s Canadiens as their star players Guy Lafleur, Steve Shutt, Ken Dryden, Serge Savard, etc.

In 1981, Romanuk moved to Toronto in order to study at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute's radio and television arts program.

From 1981 until 1984, in parallel with attending classes at Ryerson, Romanuk did unpaid work on Toronto Marlboros Sunday broadcasts on CKLN-FM, Ryerson's campus radio station.

He began as a stats and technical equipment associate for play-by-play announcer Michael Landsberg before taking over the play-by-play duties following Landsberg's departure.

In 1983, Romanuk, still a student at Ryerson, got his first paid job in broadcasting, getting hired to provide radio colour commentary for the Ontario Hockey League's Oshawa Generals on CKAR alongside play-by-play man Mike Inglis.

By 1984, Inglis moved on and Romanuk took over the play-by-play duties.

Upon graduating from Ryerson in 1984, in addition to continuing as the radio voice of the Ontario Hockey League's Oshawa Generals, Romanuk added a few more freelance gigs.

Additionally, fresh graduate Romanuk freelanced for the new all-sports cable channel TSN, starting there as a newsroom editorial assistant in February 1985, months after the channel's September 1984 launch.

Aside from working in the fledgling network's newsroom, he soon got the opportunity to contribute field pieces and file on-camera reports, even doing the occasional update on TSN's central nightly sports newscast SportsDesk.

With his television profile raised as a result of the TSN on-camera appearances, Romanuk got hired to host the OHL Game of the Week presentation during the 1986–87 season on Global Television Network.

This further television exposure led to Calgary's CFAC-TV station (at the time still nominally unaffiliated though increasingly reliant on Global's programming) offering him C$50,000, an amount Romanuk in a later interview described as "more money than I had been making from all my freelance gigs put together", for a full-time job of reporting and anchoring their Newsfirst news show.

He continued on the job even after graduating, performing it until 1987.

First on Hockey Night in Canada as stats assistant and runner for the CBC Sports on-air hockey personnel—play-by-play announcer Bob Cole, colour commentator Harry Neale, and studio host Dave Hodge—a job he did until 1987.

While working behind the scenes at HNIC, on March 14, 1987, Romanuk was among the first hand witnesses of Dave Hodge's pen flip, an incident where the host—irritated over the network's insistence on cutting to local news at 11 pm rather than sticking with coverage of an exciting conclusion to Canadiens vs. Flyers game that had been headed into overtime—criticized the CBC live on air while signing off to throw to local news.

The 25-year-old took the generous offer, bringing his girlfriend along across the country in 1987.

However, mere months after moving to Calgary, Romanuk received a full-time reporter position offer for TSN's SportsDesk back in Toronto and decided to take it to the displeasure of his Calgary employers.

In October 1987, Romanuk began at TSN as a full-time commentator and reporter.

He covered the NHL Entry Draft from 1987 to '93 and 1997 as a reporter, and from 1994 to '96 and 1998 as a co-host.

He also co-hosted the program Baseball Tonight.

He did National Hockey League play-by-play for the TSN Hockey from 1989 until 2001.

He was best known in Canada for his play-by-play work of international hockey on TSN, where he called virtually every major IIHF tournament from 1990 until he left the network in early 2001.

In November 1992, while covering the Vanier Cup with TSN as a sideline reporter, he was literally picked up and carried around the field in good-natured celebration by Queen's fans after the game had ended, shortly after interviewing MVP Brad Elberg.

He has not covered a Vanier Cup since then.

Romanuk has also shared a production credit on CHL Sunday Night on TSN and also on Rogers Sportsnet's presentation of the Spengler Cup hockey tournament.

He has also worked at six Olympic Games (Sydney, Salt Lake City, Athens, Beijing, Vancouver and London), covering a variety of sports for CBC, TSN and CTV.

Before 1994, Romanuk was the secondary TSN hockey play-by-play voice behind Jim Hughson.

Hughson left TSN and from the 1994–95 season to the 1997–98 season (when the network lost national NHL rights) Romanuk was the network's lead NHL play-by-play announcer.

From 1998 to 2001 he was the English-language television voice of the Montreal Canadiens' regional broadcasts on TSN.

In spring 2001, Romanuk left TSN after fourteen years at the network, accepting the offer of hosting a morning drive show on The Team 1050, newly re-branded AM station in Toronto.

In a later interview, Romanuk cited the fact that the job didn't entail regular travel as well as CHUM's superior financial offer to his TSN compensation as two reasons he decided to leave his established post at TSN.

Previously operating for decades as 1050 CHUM in the oldies format, the struggling station looked to turn its financial fortunes around with an all-sports format.

Simultaneously, the station's corporate owner CHUM Limited launched The Team Radio Network, an ambitious grouping of sports format AM radio stations throughout Canada.

Romanuk wasn't the only prominent Toronto-based sportscaster on board for the launch of The Team 1050; CHUM Ltd. also brought in Mike Richards to be Romanuk's co-host in the morning while further managing a bit of a coup by luring one of TSN's most prominent personalities Jim Van Horne away from television and pairing him in the afternoon drive slot with The Globe and Mail's sports writer Stephen Brunt who had prior been appearing as pundit and guest host on Bob McCown's Prime Time Sports, the established afternoon drive show the newly assembled Team 1050 afternoon duo were now trying to compete with.