John Garrett, longtime Vancouver Canucks broadcaster, dies suddenly at 74

John Garrett, who spent four decades calling hockey and more than two decades as the primary voice of Vancouver Canucks broadcasts, died suddenly on Tuesday.

The 74-year-old Garrett was found in his hotel room in Salt Lake City on Monday afternoon, where he had been calling the first-round series between the Vegas Golden Knights and the Utah Mammoth.

“The National Hockey League family is stunned and saddened by the sudden passing of John Garrett, whose astute analysis took fans, particularly in Western Canada, inside our game for the last four decades,” NHL Commsioner Gary Bettman said in a statement, noting the last time he saw Garrett was Friday night, when Garrett called the Mammoth’s first-ever home playoff game.

John Garrett was born in Trenton, Ontario and drafted 38th overall by the St. Louis Blues in 1971. He spent six seasons in the WHA before entering the NHL with the Hartford Whalers in 1979, appearing in 207 games over six seasons with the Whalers, Quebec Nordiques, and Vancouver Canucks.

He moved into broadcasting in 1986 with CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada, where he spent 12 seasons calling Western Canadian games and working his way up to eight consecutive conference finals. He left CBC for Sportsnet in 1998, called Calgary Flames games nationally and locally, and in 2002 took over as the color analyst on Canucks regional broadcasts alongside play-by-play voice John Shorthouse and reporter Dan Murphy. That partnership ran for 21 seasons until Garrett stepped away from the full-time role in March 2023,

He stayed on with Sportsnet in a reduced capacity after stepping back from the primary role, continuing to take select assignments — including national playoff coverage — which brought him to Salt Lake City last week.