Ralph Mellanby, Former Hockey Night T-V Producer Still in the Game

By Bill Gay

It has been quite a few years since Essex County's Ralph Mellanby "hung up his skates' as the executive producer of Canada's most watched television show. But you only have to talk to this Hall of Famer for a few minutes before finding out just how much his heart is in the game he truly cares for.

If you've been around long enough, you just might remember a very young Ralph Mellanby as one of the greats in high school basketball, playing hockey in the county's first rink here in Leamington, and as a baseball player that swung a mean bat especially with men on base. But it was not Mellanby's future to be an athlete but rather a builder of television sports as we have known it for many years. It was Mellanby that changed camera angles and rejuvenated between periods programming by hiring Don Cherry. But that was just the beginning of Mellanby's climb to lofty executive suites with icons like Roone Arledge of ABC sports. Mellanby covered Miracle on Ice, the stunning upset of the powerful Russian Olympic team by the American team largely made of college kids. Later he was on the "A" team for the broadcast of the 1988 summer games from Seoul, South Korea.

Ralph moved back to Canada from Atlanta (where his son Scott spent the last seasons of his long NHL career), and looks at the tranquility of the Niagara River, far from the hockey wars he fought as an executive so well. But the Mellanby genius is still focused on hockey. He's excited that big league hockey is coming back to Winnipeg with the re-emergence of the Jets franchise. And he says "Quebec City will have an NHL team again within 2 years".  To read more go to www.leamingtonpostandshopper.com.