Tom Larscheid leaving Canucks' broadcast booth

Tom Larscheid had his ace on Wednesday. Vancouver Canuck hockey fans had their ace for most of the last 33 years.

It is the end of an era for the National Hockey League club and broadcasting in Vancouver as the Team 1040 is replacing Larscheid with analyst Dave Tomlinson on its radio broadcasts next season.

An under-sized running back from California who moved to Vancouver to play football in 1962 and never left, Larscheid's remarkable reign over the airwaves here is unlikely to be repeated either in duration or style.

He was the colour-man on Vancouver hockey broadcasts for all but four NHL seasons since 1977, and for more than a generation of hockey fans Larscheid's insight and instincts provided a blunt barometer of the team's performance – good or bad.

“When you have a job you've loved each and every day, you're sorry to give it up,” Larscheid said late Wednesday. “But the simple reality is I'm 70 years old and it's time to pass the baton. It will be strange not to be up there in my perch during hockey season, but I've had a pretty good run.

“I'm grateful to the listeners and honoured to have worked with three of the very best play-by-play men in the business in Jim Robson, Jim Hughson and John Shorthouse. And Rick Ball is going to be right up there, too. I always called it the way I saw it and I had a lot of fun doing it. My only regret is I never got to say: 'The Vancouver Canucks are Stanley Cup champions.'”

Larscheid said 1040 has been terrific to him and he leaves with no hard feelings after the station told him recently it was going with Tomlinson, a 41-year-old from North Vancouver who was a kid when Larscheid and Robson were often better than the hockey team they broadcast.

Tomlinson has been filling in for Larscheid and working other assignments for 1040 after completing a 15-season playing career in hockey.

Larscheid got a head start on his retirement Wednesday when he had a hole-in-one playing golf with Shorthouse.

He looks forward to a lot more golf and time with his wife, Lesley.

At the radio station's invitation, Larscheid will work one final game with Shorthouse, the Oct. 9 season-opener against Los Angeles that starts the Canucks' 40th anniversary season. The hockey team will go the next 40 years without Larscheid.