Most of all, he shared with us the sound of those glorious pipes. A set that carried the same lingering resonance in this town as Sinatra’s did for swooning bobby soxers in the ’40s or Pavarotti’s for demanding opera buffs at La Scala.

He provided the vocal soundtrack of an era. A voice that, over the years, became as familiar, as trusted, as any in your immediate family.

A voice that lifted itself up there, like lightning, with the gods. With Gallivan and Hewitt, Kelly and Cole.

“When I was back home last summer,” Peter Maher was saying Tuesday during as jam-packed a media conference as the Calgary Flames franchise has yet witnessed, “I was reminiscing with the man who brought me back into the broadcast business, Doug Young. Doug later became Canada’s Minister of Defence and other portfolios in our country, and we remain pals.

“His advice that Sunday afternoon as we sat at his place in July resonated with me all through the summer, all through the winter season:

“It’s better to leave what you do best too early, than too late.

“And that statement has tremendous impact on what my decision is today.”

In saying goodbye after over three decades, he eloquently remembered of the two sports idols of his youth, Mickey Mantle and Rocky Marciano, and how the Mick had stayed too long at the ballpark, left a shadow of his former glorious self, while the Brockton Blockbuster went out an undefeated heavyweight champion.

Peter Maher, like The Rock, left on top.

On Tuesday, he let us in on little stories, little secrets. Of how he fought off vocal woes with a sip of vinegar. How his trademark “Yeah, baby!” came out, listening to the refrain of a now-forgotten song on the radio driving home one day in late April of 1986.

In a new media-wide era — some might say epidemic — of calculated self-promotion and attention-grabbing shtick, Peter Maher remained proof that the evolution of personality could be organic.

For those of us who killed years alongside him lingering in airports before the privileged charter-only era of pro sports travel; who lived life on the road in a sense of camaraderie, drank so much awful rink coffee, swapped so many tall tales and celebrated with him as his games-called tally nudged 500, then 1,000, then 2,000, and higher, a kaleidoscopic explosion of Maher memories came flooding back Tuesday.

Watching Pete, bib at the ready, tuck into (attack might be more apt description) a lobster dinner in Boston, say, or at Bookbinders in Philly, juices flying everywhere. The two games in Tokyo against Darryl Sutter’s Sharks in a rink which featured a 3-metre diving board at one end of the swimming pool doubling as a rink. That famous night of the Jersey snowstorm fiasco with around 500 people in attendance. Badger Bob Johnson, ever the superstitious one, shifting the location of their game-day depending on the latest result, until one day he and a perplexed Maher were spotted scaling a locked penalty box. The day Canadian songbird Anne Murray, a favourite of his, called to celebrate a milestone.

Peter in the gloom of Red Square in Moscow. Peter in the bright lights of Times Square in New York. Peter with Doug Barkley or Mike Rogers or, for a year anyway, Peter Loubardias in the broadcast booth.