Hall of Fame Hockey Journalist Jim Kelley Loses Battle with Cancer

During my working affiliation with CJCL-AM in Toronto, ON, I had become accustomed to listening to a fascinating broadcaster by the name of Jim Kelley opine on the direction of hockey in a diverse grouping. His specialty was that as a beat writer for the Buffalo Sabres at the The Buffalo News in 1981, but also expanded to the point where he gained such national acclaim he was awarded a spot in the Hockey Hall of fame in 2004.

His career took a long bit of a journey having worked for practically all major media sources. ESPN, FOX, Rogers, and Sports Illustrated, all featured his hockey columns. With the advent of syndication over the Internet, I listened to a guy who had a mastery of communication equally paired with a volume of endless stories in his hockey world. It was a natural pairing of Kelley to Fan590's curmudgeon McCown, to which their friendship colored their discussions. Kelley had to reel in the Canadian bias with his American perspective and provide a seasoning of hope that the game he loved was being reported accurately.

Jim Kelley was old school in the way that he would rail against the new media sources of social networks in favor of the trenches of certified fact-checking. But even if he did have misgivings about the technology, Kelley filed his last column online to Rogers Sportsnet sportsnet.ca the morning of his passing. Even in an erie twist he recently served as an eulogist most recently after the death of his friend Coach Pat Burns.

I never got to work with Jim, but for a brief time we were colleagues at Fadoo.ca. He always seemed like a great guy and now the hockey world is all the more at a loss for his passing by cancer.

[Via: Sportsnet.ca]