Too jangly or just jiggy enough?

The Stroumboulopoulos & Cherry Show: Of course, The Don would have to learn how to pronounce it first.

Rumour has it — and when the source is hockey insider extraordinaire Bob McKenzie, it’s hardly mere industry gossip anymore — that George Stroumboulopoulos is the new face, the new ’tude, of Hockey Night in Canada.

Lord knows the show could use a facelift. But then so could we all.

But, yowza, not just HNIC. We’re talking the whole Rogers enchilada, the mega-hockey empire that the communications company bought for $5.2 billion last year.

That means Stroumboulopoulos all the time and Stroumboulopoulos everywhere — across all the multi-media platforms, five, six, seven nights a week, on the CBC network, on all the Rogers sports channels, in your head, in your dreams.

The biggest hockey broadcast job in the country, a TV face-time goliath standing astride the altar at which Canada worships.

McKenzie, the Star’s former hockey columnist before he went all in as Broadcast Guy, essentially confirmed via tweets to his gazillion Twitter followers what has long been circulating among the media chatterati. And the sound you hear is the death wail from a bunch of other hopefuls as they throw themselves out the nearest window.

As of press deadline (a concept that doesn’t exist in the Twitter-verse), neither Rogers nor Stroumboulopoulos had offered up any formal nay or yay on the matter. Stroumboulopoulos was actually attending the Canadian Screen Awards in Toronto where he was, we’re told, mildly roasted from the stage by host Martin Short and doubtlessly bird-dogged by reporters chasing McKenzie’s bulletin. He didn’t comment afterwards. Stroumboulop — ah hell, Strombo (not to be mistaken with Strombone1, the Twitter handle adopted by Vancouver, I mean Florida, goalie Roberto Luongo) — is, of course, the host of his own eponymous TV talk show, a gig there’s no reason for the 41-year-old (which isn’t very so young ’n’ hip, just sayin’) to relinquish because he’s multi-tasking savvy.

No hockey background but Strombo can certainly talk the talk; he’s been doing that since moons-ago MuchMusic VJ days. Not to mock the salad days resume. VJ is surely no less uninspiring, as prep work for purportedly one of the most important jobs in the Dominion, than weatherman, whence came Ron MacLean. And whither MacLean is one of the first questions that arises with the news of Strombo’s appointment.

And Strombo was also, I’m told, a one-time intern at The FAN. Which is pretty cool.

Here’s the juice: Cherry stays put, reportedly offered a two-year contract extension by Rogers — the media monster that purchased HNIC and which, sources said Sunday night, is utterly and unilaterally responsible for the Strombo call. That is to say, this is strictly a Rogers hiring, not a CBC decision.

MacLean, host of HNIC since 1987, isn’t out of a job but he will no longer be the ringmaster. A reduced role but still remaining, according to sources, as Cherry’s straight man on Coach’s Corner.

Listen, truth is HNIC has for quite some time been in dire need of a shake-up, a recalibration, a reset. The game takes care of itself but the packaging has become lame and the cast of surrounding TV characters overly familiar. There’s no zing, is the thing. Like Cherry — now an octogenarian — the show looks and acts old and the chatty parts, excluding Coach’s Corner, banal for all the more recent addition of fresher faces.

For his part, Cherry all but begged Rogers to leave his weekly segment on the show alone, after the corporation closed its deal for HNIC — a 12-year ownership that dramatically altered Canada’s sports media landscape. That deal gave Rogers national broadcast and multimedia rights over all NHL games starting this season, with CBC continuing to broadcast the flagship show for the next four years but giving Rogers editorial control.

In any event, Cherry was himself rather lame and suck-uppy when he addressed the acquisition — and his own stake in it — at the time. “If you’re No. 1, why would you fool around like that?” said Cherry, referring to rumours that change was a-coming to the Corner as well. “I know I’m good. I didn’t fall off a turnip truck. I know everybody watches so all I’m saying is take it easy, don’t try to ruin a good thing, just leave us alone and we’ll be just as good next year.”

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Well, next year has arrived, it seems, for Cherry et al. And George S. has really arrived.

Hockey Night in Canada with earrings and a soul patch, oh my.

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