Holy Mackinaw!
Hockey Night in Punjabi’s goal calls have gone viral and easily are one of the best Canadian stories in these Stanley Cup playoffs. Reminiscent of enthusiastic soccer goal calls and on par with the best legendary hockey calls, HNIP play-by-play announcer Harnarayan Singh’s exuberant “Bonino. Bonino, Bonino!” — eight times in a row during a Penguins game against Washington, followed by his repeating it 10 times after the Stanley Cup Game 1 winner — has broken south of the border, with signs and T-shirts being made in Pittsburgh.
The Penguins played Singh’s call while reviewing game tape, and Hockey Night in Canada’s Nick Kypreos took a shot at replicating it.
Singh describes the attention as humbling, and knows the attention is coming at the sport’s biggest moment.
“As a broadcaster to have this happening, you couldn’t ask for anything more,” says Singh on the line from Vancouver. “It was brought up to (Penguins coach) Mike Sullivan in his press conference. I think the third question was about the Bonino call. I mean, wow, this is the Stanley Cup final, and to have this goal call be something that has become a storyline, that is just fascinating and humbling.”
Singh’s story is quintessentially Canadian. His great-grandfather was one of the first Sikhs to arrive, in 1908. He grew up part of the only Sikh family in Brooks, Alta., and says hockey was a way that helped break down differences, helping him make friends. As a kid, he idolized Bob Cole, and drove his family batty with his calls of the games at home.
Now living his dream, he is amazed how positive the hockey world has been.
If you combine Singh’s calls with all of the coverage Raptors super-fan Nav Bhatia got during the NBA playoffs — including the front page of this paper — there has been a surprising amount of Sikh representation during the basketball and hockey playoffs.
Bhatia’s line to the CBC — “I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t womanize, I Raptorize, that’s all I do” — should be on a T-shirt.
(Full disclosure: Personally, I can’t help but notice this, as I too am Sikh, and like most people of ethnicity I pay attention when I see someone similar to me. I like that both Bhatia and Singh and his HNIP colleagues, Randip Janda, Bhupinder Hundal and Harpreet Pandher, present their culture to the rest of Canada in a positive way that any sports fan can relate too.)
Hockey Night in Punjabi was born as a part of a CBC experiment regarding broadcasting in other languages. It was picked up for a season in 2010-11 and then cancelled. It returned in 2013 after new sponsorship was secured. In 2014, after the Rogers deal, it was moved to OMNI, and Singh praises Rogers for improving the production values.
Considering the toxic atmosphere online, I have to ask Singh about whether he’s faced racism. He answers yes, but it has been drowned out by the positivity.
“The answer to that is it’s very minimal . . . it is there, but thankfully you can ignore it because the majority of people are very welcoming and been very excited for us,” he says. “Punjabi is the third most-spoken language in Canada, and wherever Sikhs go, they get involved in politics and the greater community.
“We are just as Canadian as anyone else.”
In terms of those colourful goal calls, Singh says his style has always been enthusiastic, but the difference now is the broadcast has a dedicated social media person who can immediately put it online, and people are clearly responding.
Singh chalks it up to the sense of community sports provides. Like his call, it is something worth celebrating.
“It breaks down barriers, right? Sports is the universal force,” he says. “It doesn’t matter who you are, where you are from or how you look. If you are all cheering for that same team, all of those things don’t matter.”