The Fan 590 is supposed to be Canada’s biggest and greatest and best-tasting all-sports station. It’s supposed to be listenable. And, for the most part, it is. The Morning Show guys (Landry and Gord) are very good; Mike Hogan isn’t my favourite host, but the breadth of his coverage is pretty much unequalled by any other show or media outlet; Chuck Swirsky is weird-as-hell, but seems to know everything that’s happened in professional athletics from 1977 to the present. And Bob McCown is the showcase. He gets the good guests, he hits on all the major topics. Bob doesn’t know a goddamn thing about baseball, but he seems to pay attention to the standings.

And then there’s Mike Toth. Toth is now the permanent substitute for McCown when the latter’s enjoying any of his twelve weeks of vacation. I don’t know how it happened; I don’t know whose decision dusted with rose petals Toth’s path to the broadcaster’s chair. I can’t figure it out. But, whoever it was, the guy must’ve lived above a rink.

Toth is the perfect hockey highlights guy. He’s got a bombastic, stilted voice; he speaks in staccato spurts. He has an undistinguished intelligence. His life is hockey; he knows everything about hockey. The man loves the OHL. He loves the QMJHL. He enjoys things that most people wouldn’t even abut their homes onto, let alone watch. But, for some reason, he’s been promoted. He’s been taken out of his hockey chair, and moved to the man-of-all-sports primetime show. You’ve got to know basketball, you’ve got to know baseball, you’ve got to know football, you’ve got to know business. Toth knows hockey. Period.

Which leads to shows like the following: It’s the winter; Toth’s filling in for Bob. The Patriots are undefeated. The Raptors are winning. The baseball winter meetings are humming. And what does Toth talk about? “I thought it’d be fun if you called in with your stories about old dad taking you to the rink.”

And thereupon followed an hour of phone calls from middle-aged men reminiscing about the smell of shin guards at five a.m.

Yeah, it’s terrific that your dad, who worked seventy hours a week, had to wake up at five o’clock to take you to hockey practice. I’m sure he loved it. And now you’re an electrician. So, obviously, it was all worth it.

The next time Toth was on, I thought it’d be different. This time it was a Monday. There’d been two hockey games played the previous night. Nothing was really happening in the NHL. So what’d Toth talk about? “I thought it’d be fun if you called in and told me the funniest things that’ve happened to you at the rink.”

But the next time…The next time it’d be different. Toth sat down. He introduced himself: “Well, I thought today we’d switch it up a little bit. I thought…hey, what if you called in and told me your best stories about scoring your first goal.”

It’s hockey with this guy. Just hockey. He thinks about hockey all day.

His April Fool’s joke about McCowan defecting to Manchester United was so…so incredibly amateurish. The fact that so many people bought it proves that junior hockey will always have a place in Southern Ontario. I think the next day he was blaming Bobby Nadeau for the beating administered by Jonathan Roy. Toth’s rationale seemed to be based on his observation that “Every Canadian kid’s been in a hockey brawl…at some time.” Well, no. You know who’s been in hockey brawls? My friends who play rec. men’s league hockey with former OHL players. You know why? Because these ex-junior pluggers haven’t realized that it’s OK to wear a cage when you’re paying to play. They still think they’re slugging through their glory years: failing Grade 10, struggling for literacy, and going on long road trips to Sarnia and Brampton.

Nelson Millman’s responsible for Toth. He put him on the radio.

“Mike, I was just talking to my buddy about a new points system. We’ve been kicking this around for years. Tell me what you think: You get one for winning the first period, one for winning the second, and two for winning the third.”

It’s time to melt the ice.