Culture
Why was a beloved hockey broadcaster pulled off the air?
As 18-year-old Montreal Canadiens draft pick Michael Hage searched for words to honor his father, who had died in a swimming pool accident a year earlier, Sportsnet broadcaster Jeff Marek placed his hand on Hage’s arm, helped him move his microphone up so he could be heard and then put a reassuring hand on Hage’s back as he held back tears.
“The whole hockey world is cheering for you,” Marek said. “You know that, right?”
That moment from Sportsnet’s live broadcast of the 2024 NHL Draft in Las Vegas was widely praised for its tenderness — a warm, empathetic gesture by Marek, 55, a veteran broadcaster who over a 30-year career had endeared himself to television and radio audiences.
Marek’s affable, beer-with-a-buddy demeanor and encyclopedic knowledge of hockey made him one of the sport’s most beloved and widely respected voices. He had worked his way up from an entry-level radio station gig to hosting the “The Jeff Marek Show” every day at noon on the same station where he got his start and for the last 13 years was one of Sportsnet’s signature talents.
He ran against type in the usually staid broadcast culture, with full-arm tattoos, and he wore jeans and T-shirts when he wasn’t wearing a suit for Sportsnet broadcasts. Before landing as a full-time hockey analyst, Marek hosted a popular professional wrestling radio show in Toronto. Yet he was so talented, so beloved, that former Sportsnet president Scott Moore, who hired Marek in 2011, viewed him as a potential future host of “Hockey Night in Canada,” the sport’s iconic Saturday night broadcast.
But draft night — June 28, 2024 — would be Marek’s last appearance for Sportsnet. He was absent from the post-draft taping of “32 Thoughts,” the popular hockey podcast he hosts with Elliotte Friedman. Then the following week, Marek missed the final two episodes of his daily radio show, before a summer hiatus.
Those absences didn’t garner significant attention, but Marek also went dark on social media. On July 9, one fan wished the broadcaster happy birthday on X but got no response from Marek, known for his friendly engagement. Another user commented on Marek’s unusual silence. “Jeff Marek of 32 Thoughts has completely disappeared from the face of the earth since the evening of the draft,” wrote @NHLJackManning on July 23.
A few Marek fans had intuited something was amiss, and they were correct. In July, Sportsnet quietly parted ways with Marek.
It was the kind of move that normally would have warranted a public statement, but the reason behind it led both parties to choose silence. Marek had come under scrutiny from the NHL during the first round of the draft for allegedly revealing to a friend which players teams were drafting moments before those picks were publicly announced, according to league and media industry sources. The NHL shared concerns about the situation with the Nevada Gaming Control Board, which probed further, according to multiple sources briefed on that investigation.
A spokesperson for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, when asked about the matter, said in a statement provided to The Athletic:
“As a law enforcement and regulatory agency, the Nevada Gaming Control Board does not comment on whether it is, or isn’t, investigating particular persons or entities.”
The NHL and Sportsnet both declined to comment on the matter. Marek did not respond to requests for comment.
Jeff Marek’s disappearance from the Sportsnet air after the NHL Draft wasn’t noticed by many at first. (Courtesy of Sportsnet)
The draft has long been an event where Marek stood out given his decades of experience reporting on junior hockey. In Las Vegas, Marek was a key part of Sportsnet’s live broadcast and its pre-draft coverage, possessing a keen understanding of how to balance informing the audience while keeping them entertained. In one pre-draft podcast with Friedman, he was ebullient, ribbing his podcasting partner about a fashion mishap earlier in the week, sharing stories about cheekily named “hockey dogs” and predicting (incorrectly it would turn out) that the Anaheim Ducks would select prospect Zeev Buium with the third overall pick.
The NHL’s decision to host its annual draft at the Sphere — a futuristic orb-like arena at the Venetian resort in Las Vegas — made the 2024 draft seem bigger, the spectacle of it ramped up. It was also slated to be the last centralized NHL Draft, with the league allowing teams to draft from their home bases next year.
On the first night of the draft, Marek sat at a clear desk next to the main floor, where team executives and scouts conferred before making their picks. Throughout the broadcast, he interviewed each newly drafted player.
As part of Sportsnet’s crew that night, Marek was privy to the draft selections before they were publicly announced. This is common practice for broadcast rightsholders. The production truck is notified of the pick approximately one or two minutes before it’s made so that graphics can be prepared, video clips readied and cameras trained on the player about to find out he has been selected.
That was why Sportsnet cameras were in the perfect position to capture the memorable reaction from Beckett Sennecke, whose stunning selection at No. 3 by the Anaheim Ducks prompted him to stand up, bewildered, before uttering “Holy f—.”
Moments later, Marek spoke to Sennecke about his teary-eyed parents, overwhelmed by his selection.
When Hage went No. 21 to Montreal, Marek delivered one of the night’s signature moments and it highlighted his ability to make interview subjects comfortable.
Also under the Sphere that evening working the draft was Mark Seidel, a former NHL scout with the Minnesota Wild who for the past five years worked in scouting and player personnel roles with the Ontario Hockey League’s Barrie Colts. He also runs his own scouting service, branded the North American Central Scouting Independent Bureau (not to be confused with the NHL’s Central Scouting Bureau) and has occasionally provided draft content for ESPN.
Seidel and Marek have known each other for years, according to two people with knowledge of their relationship. Seidel has made multiple appearances on podcasts with Marek, including to talk about prospects in advance of the annual draft.
In Las Vegas, Seidel correctly predicted several picks on X, which prompted concerns that Marek had informed Seidel who those teams were picking.
The nearly five-hour broadcast ended around 8:15 p.m. local time, and Marek was scheduled to leave Las Vegas that night on a red-eye flight. But before he left, at least one NHL official approached Marek about wanting to speak with him.
The league was concerned about the potential misuse or dissemination of insider information, league and media sources said. Gaming industry experts said that draft “leakage” and “tipping” is relatively common. Possessing what’s deemed “insider information” is not inherently problematic; only if that information is used as a means of financial gain does it become an integrity issue. According to a publicly available document from the Nevada Gaming Control Board on requirements licensed books must adhere to regarding wagers on the NHL Draft, “acceptance of wagers which involve a specific player must cease 24 hours prior to the start of the first round. Acceptance of all other wagers must cease prior to the start of their respective round.”
League and media sources said that Marek gave Seidel a heads up on the picks so that Seidel could better prepare and offer analysis of those selections on social media. Professional sports leagues are known to monitor social media during live events such as drafts; it is also common for leagues to partner with external integrity and compliance firms to monitor social media activity.
When contacted by The Athletic, Seidel declined to answer questions on the situation, including why he deleted a number of social media posts he made on the night of the draft.
During prior drafts, Seidel showed a knack for predicting picks just before they happened, delivering those scoops on his X account. The wording in those posts were often couched, appearing to be an insider’s intuition. “Philadelphia and Cutter Gauthier were made for each other … I’d lay money on him,” he tweeted during the 2022 draft, nailing the Flyers’ pick just before it was announced.
In the 2020 draft, he predicted or heavily insinuated the first 12 picks correctly. Leading up to the event, he sent out a tweet highlighting that he had correctly predicted the top of the first round in other drafts.
Asked about picks he predicted at earlier drafts, Seidel did not answer.
Four people close to Marek, who declined to speak on the record because of the legal sensitivity of the situation, said he is not known to gamble. Two of those four said he has, on multiple occasions, expressed an aversion to promoting gambling on air. On his eponymous radio show, his producer generally handles the betting segments.
One source briefed on the draft night situation said that no gambling impropriety was discovered or any intent for Marek to gain financially from what happened.
However, because Marek was alleged to have shared proprietary information with someone outside the company, and given the company’s partnership with the NHL — Sportsnet has two years left on a 12-year deal as the league’s national rightsholder — the network was in a difficult position involving one of its most prominent broadcasters.
As speculation about his prolonged absence from the airwaves persisted, Canadian sports media commentator Jonah Sigel broke news of Marek’s departure last week. That same day, a Sportsnet spokesperson confirmed he was no longer with the company.
The next day, Marek addressed his departure on X, though he did not publicly share the reasons behind it. (Multiple sources said Marek signed a confidentiality agreement prior to exiting the company.)
“After 13 great years at Sportsnet, I’m moving on,” he wrote. “It’s been an incredible journey and I’m thankful to have worked alongside so many great people and played a role in bringing sports and hockey news to fans across Canada and the world. More to come soon.”
The news of his departure prompted an outpouring of support from within the hockey and sports media community, with many lamenting Marek’s departure and sharing anecdotes of how he’d endeared himself to his audience — including encouraging messages he’d sent to one listener as they battled cancer — and mentored young journalists and others starting their careers in hockey.
Nick Alberga, who now hosts the “Leafs Morning Take” on The Nation Network, said he didn’t know Marek well when Marek offered up his name as a potential host for Sportsnet’s “Hockey Central Saturday” in 2017, helping him land a spot on the weekly syndicated show.
“That essentially got my foot in the door,” said Alberga.
At Sportsnet, Marek’s absence is already being felt. He had a reputation for championing producers and technical staff, and for welcoming new voices onto his many shows.
“Jeff is a great advocate of diversifying the voices that talk about the sport,” said Dave Cadeau, the former director of programming at Sportsnet Radio. “He really appreciated the value that it can bring to the conversation.”
Moore recalled meeting Marek for breakfast in Toronto before hiring him for the first time while Moore was an executive at CBC.
“As soon as I met him, I thought this guy is going to be a quirky star,” Moore said. “He wasn’t your standard ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ anchor type. He’s got a little bit of an edge to him, a little bit of character to him.”
Moore later hired Marek at Sportsnet and made him one of the network’s marquee talents.
“I know he’ll do well in whatever his next triumph is,” said Moore, who is now chairman of Uninterrupted Canada and CEO of the 2025 Invictus Games.
After Marek addressed his departure on Friday, Friedman, his longtime podcast partner, wrote on X: “Life throws curveballs at you. I will miss being his teammate, and thank him for being a tremendous co-pilot to our 32 thoughts podcasting voyage — which will continue.”
Friedman, when contacted about the details of Marek’s departure, declined to comment.
Sportsnet has yet to name Marek’s replacement on the podcast or who might fill his roles on television and radio.
In a 2012 newspaper profile, Marek noted the odd trajectory of his career. His first job was working at a graveyard. He postponed a planned Ph.D. in English to take an entry-level job at TheFan 590 — the network that would become Sportsnet radio.
“It’s been kind of an accidental career,” Marek told the Stouffville Examiner, shortly after being hired by Sportsnet. “It’s been a little surreal and bizarre. … And I’m thankful for that.”
— The Athletic’s Corey Pronman contributed to this story.
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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