The fateful day for Hockey Night in Canada began ominously last Thursday with a call from Gary Bettman.

At 10 a.m. a day earlier, a team of seven from Rogers had made a breathtaking pitch to the NHL commissioner at the league’s offices in New York: Rogers wanted to control all NHL hockey in Canada, sweeping TSN and CBC away.

By 6 p.m. last Wednesday, members of the Rogers team were in an SUV on the way to the airport. They were barely able to contain their excitement.

Their 90-minute presentation to the NHL went very well, so well that they had left with a handshake deal. Rogers and the NHL intended to announce a 12-year, $5.2 billion deal to lock up exclusive NHL broadcast rights that cut out the CBC and Bell Media-owned sports specialty station TSN and would have ended Hockey Night in Canada.

Scott Moore, former president of CBC Sports and now president of broadcasting for Rogers Media, was in the front seat of the SUV. Rogers CEO Nadir Mohamed was behind him and Keith Pelley, president of Rogers Media, was in the back, according to Moore.

Moore yelled back at Pelley, “Keith, remember when we got to Sportsnet three years ago and we said we wanted to be Canada’s No. 1 sports media brand, and everyone laughed? And Nadir piped up and said, ‘Guys, no one’s going to be laughing now.”’

The CBC did not yet know that the next 72 hours would reshape its destiny and the hockey landscape across Canada.

Early Thursday morning, Bettman contacted Hubert Lacroix, president of the CBC, who was in Montreal, and set up a conference call for 2 p.m. that day.

In an interview with the Star, CBC lead negotiators Jeffrey Orridge and Neil McEneaney described what happened in the next few days.

Thursday, 2 p.m.

When 2 p.m. arrived on Thursday, three people were on the call from the CBC: Lacroix, Orridge and McEneaney.

For the NHL, Bettman, deputy commissioner Bill Daly and NHL COO John Collins were on the phone.

“All we knew was the commissioner wanted to speak to us on a conference call,” McEneaney said.

The CBC’s exclusive negotiating window with the NHL had closed at the end of August and the CBC had submitted what they considered “a very aggressive bid,” Orridge said.

They got a rude awakening. “What if the NHL has decided to go with a single party to acquire all the rights?” Bettman asked the CBC contingent. And then he answered his own question: “That’s what we’re going to do.”

Bettman didn’t mention names but said he would like the CBC to speak to that third party, who Bettman called a “gatekeeper.”

At the end of the call, “(Bettman) said, ‘Keith Pelley will call you,’” McEneaney explained.

Both men knew Pelley well. Five minutes later, Pelley called them and said, “We need to chat.”

It was about 2:30 p.m.

Pelley said that he, Moore and chief sales officer Jack Tomik were going to jump in a cab and pay them a visit. When they got to the CBC headquarters on Front St., they signed non-disclosure agreements.

Thursday, 3:30 p.m.

The three executives from Rogers met with McEneaney, Orridge and Jacques Gaboury, the CBC’s legal counsel.

The CBC folks sat down and outlined some of their thoughts about what the relationship could look like related to the Saturday night broadcasts.

The Rogers execs said they had a deal in principle and were very close to finalizing it, and their plan was to announce the deal on Tuesday.

But the news was going to get worse. “Keith said, we need a deal by Saturday. I’m going like, ‘Saturday? In two days?’” McEneaney said. “We knew we had to get down to business.”

Rogers was clear in what they offered, laying out the terms. They needed to finish the deal quickly, and the CBC was coming to the talks very late.

Negotiations were on. The CBC had to respond.

Thursday, 5 p.m.

The meeting between Rogers and the CBC concluded. The next step was to get something on paper as the CBC hadn’t seen anything in writing. A meeting was set for 1 p.m. the next day at the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Toronto.

Thursday from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m.

CBC executives Orridge and McEneaney knew this was going to be a long night. They ordered pizza and called in members of the negotiating team.

The CBC had to analyze the terms of the proposals. There was no wiggle room: there would be one rights holder and it wouldn’t be the CBC.

Rogers coveted Hockey Night in Canada. Both the CBC and Rogers had a high degree of trust, and the CBC said that had that trust not been in place, the deal could have fallen through right then.

Some CBC people left at midnight, others at 2 a.m. as they documented what they understood and put together a counter-proposal. They had to figure out what this meant for the CBC, so they could get back to the corporation’s president. Lacroix was still in Montreal and all he knew was that Rogers had an agreement in principle with the NHL, but he didn’t know what it was.

Friday, 1 p.m., the Intercontinental

The CBC met with one of the three Rogers people at 1 p.m. Another meeting was scheduled for 3 p.m. with a larger group from Rogers. At the 1 p.m. meeting, CBC negotiators found the discussion wasn’t going as smoothly as they had expected. They broke up about 2:30 p.m. after the CBC aired a number of concerns.

Friday, 3 p.m., the Intercontinental

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Scott Moore, Keith Pelley and their legal team met with three people from the CBC: McEneaney, Orridge and Gaboury. The talks evolved at a more accelerated pace, and there was more of an understanding, according to the CBC. The meeting went until 5 p.m.

McEneaney suggested to Pelley that he should fly to Montreal to “see the whites of Hubert Lacroix’s eyes” if they were to be partners and if they were to present themselves as partners on stage at the announcement. Pelley agreed.

Friday, 6:30 p.m.

The CBC briefed Lacroix in Montreal, and CBC negotiators returned to the headquarters to do more analysis.

Friday 6:30 p.m. to 2 a.m.

CBC negotiators ordered in Chinese food at the headquarters on Front St. and prepared for another long night to do the heavy lifting. The CBC had a framework for a counter-proposal, but there were a number of outstanding issues. They were trying to get something on paper to present to the CBC president in Montreal and the board.

Saturday morning

Orridge was coaching his 8-year-old son’s rep basketball team in a weekend Toronto tournament. McEneaney was in Huntsville with his 15-year-old son’s minor-midget hockey team. Over the course of the day, they were in constant phone contact with each other and other Rogers officials. They were still trying to work out the details of the deal. Orridge had to leave his son’s game to find a quiet spot to talk and arrange conference calls with Rogers. Meanwhile, McEneaney left the hockey game and sat in a parking lot to engage in talks with Orridge and Rogers officials. A lot of the conversations were with Moore at Rogers.

Saturday night, 7:30-10 p.m.

While Hockey Night in Canada aired a game between the Maple Leafs and the Washington Capitals, the larger strategic CBC group reconvened by phone, with five or six people going over the deal. A key person on the CBC team was going to take his son to the Leafs game, but cancelled. The CBC strategic team spent more than two hours on the phone hashing over the details that Rogers had presented and deciding on how the CBC was going to respond. Orridge missed a fundraiser.

Sunday morning

The exchange of documents finally took place. The lawyers drafted and sifted through the language. Orridge was 90 minutes away in King City as his son’s rep basketball tournament continued. Orridge left in the middle of the game so he could talk by phone with Rogers and McEneaney, who was still in Huntsville at his son’s hockey tournament.

Sunday, 10:30 a.m.

In Montreal, Lacroix was taking his two daughters to gym class. He had a telephone conversation with Mohamed, the departing CEO of Rogers.

Sunday night, Montreal

Pelley, president of Rogers Media, flew to Montreal to meet with Lacroix. Lacroix told Pelley he would meet him at the Starbucks at Dorval Airport. When Pelley landed, Lacroix bought him a Christmas cookie in the shape of a snowman to honour him for his efforts to fly to meet him. They talked for some time and Pelley didn’t leave the airport. He flew back to Toronto.

Sunday, Toronto, 6- 11 p.m.

Orridge was driving back home while he continued to have conversations with McEneaney over the language in the proposal. Sunday night was crunch time because they were going to fly to Montreal the next day to present the four-year deal to Lacroix and the board. The final deal was getting closer, but some fine details remained. There were no dinners with their families while they were on the phone reviewing the documents, making changes and confirming things with their legal counsel. The documents were exchanged in password-protected emails.

Monday, 8 a.m.

Orridge, McEneaney and CBC lawyer Jacques Gaboury flew to Montreal to present the deal to Lacroix and the CBC board. The board meeting was at 2 p.m. They still had to reconvene by phone with Rogers and time was ticking away. The legal counsels for both sides were on the phone.

Monday, 12:50 p.m.

Finally, signatures were put on the legal documents and the deal was finalized. The 2 p.m. board meeting was just over an hour away. At the same time, they were updating other correspondence so they could walk the board through the deal, explaining how the relationship with Rogers would work. The announcement was planned for Tuesday morning at 11 a.m.

For 3 ½ hours, the deal was presented to the CBC’s 12-person board of directors. The negotiators explained what it meant to the CBC, what it meant to their partners, what it meant to the overall strategy. Lead negotiators McEneaney and Orridge left so the board could discuss the deal in private. The lead negotiators strongly recommended they accept the deal from Rogers and it was subsequently approved.

“We thought there were a lot of advantages for the CBC and Rogers is a great partner,” McEneaney said. “We felt this was the right thing to do for the CBC.”

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