What was supposed to be a regulation day in the office ended up raising an uproar within the hockey community, and all because of the way Ben McDonald is, a blunt, straightforward guy who wears his heart on his sleeve. Well, that put him straight in the firing line of hockey fans who didn’t take his statements about the NHL Opening Night too kindly. And now, the MLB analyst has to prove that he wasn’t hating on hockey, which brought him on the Leafs Morning Take podcast.

“I’m just going to be honest with you. I will be somewhere, but there’s zero chance I’ll be watching,” said McDonald, when asked about the Florida Panthers’ chances at a three-peat, igniting the spark of discourse. The particular interaction between McDonald and his co-commentator, Kevin Brown, was everything mixed together – awkward, hilarious, and Ben McDonald left no doubt about his preference when it came to NHL Opening Night.

But now, in the podcast, McDonald talked about how his comments have been portrayed. “It’s funny how having a little bit of fun can get really turned around in a hurry,” McDonald said. “And people made it out that I hate the game of hockey, ‘and Ben McDonald hates hockey’, which is obviously the furthest thing from the truth, you know.”

He thinks that his words have been blown out of proportion by the so-called “thumb-bumpers” of the internet who try to make “something out of nothing”. But he came clean about how he saw hockey. “I respect the game of  hockey, obviously. I respect the athletes, the big-time athletes,” the ESPN commentator said.

But he also cleared up something else: “I just don’t watch a lot of hockey. But I’m from Louisiana, man. I’m down here in the bayou. We don’t play a lot of hockey down here. I grew up playing football, basketball. And baseball is kind of what we do around here.”  And yet, that hasn’t stopped McDonald from exploring the sport. “I have been to a few hockey games. Not many, but I’ve been to a few,” he said.

He opened up about his trips to the Detroit Red Wings games back in the early ’90s, and how he even met Wayne Gretzky as part of the Olympic team at the 1988 Olympics. Jay Rosehill then asked if McDonald understood why hockey fans may have taken offense to his comments, which came off like “an unprovoked attack”. In reply, the 57-year-old said he understands some hockey fans are going to make a big deal about his comments. And maybe the hardcore fans would be a little upset about the sentiment he expressed. But he thought he was well within his rights.

“It’s weird to me that somebody can be criticized for not liking the same sport as somebody else,” Ben McDonald said. “I don’t criticize people for not liking the game of baseball. If there’s hockey fans that don’t like baseball, that’s fine.” In fact, the Hall of Famer shared how he just doesn’t follow hockey. He didn’t even know ESPN covered the NHL. Ben McDonald’s life involves just two things – the hunting season and the baseball season.

But guess what? After all the controversy, the NHL Opening Night on October 7 is also on his agenda. “I might be tuning in on Tuesday night now,” McDonald said. But he also has the MLB playoffs going on the same night. So, he will have to compartmentalize. But there is no doubt about his respect for hockey, because he knows what it takes to play the sport. “I was amazed at the athleticism, man,” McDonald confessed. “Because I have been on skates once or twice, and I spent more time on my back than I did on the skates, I can tell you. So I got a lot of respect for those guys for sure.”

McDonald’s point is simple. He doesn’t hate hockey. He just doesn’t have time for it. Or maybe the preference. Baseball is his life, his career. And he is honest about it, which started the whole fiasco.

Ben McDonald’s NHL comments that started the saga

McDonald had been covering the Wild Card series of the MLB Playoffs between the Chicago Cubs and the San Diego Padres as an ESPN analyst. And the NHL thing came up during the 2nd game, Top of the 5th inning, no outs, 0-1 count, when the Cubs were trailing the Padres 0–1. Kevin Brown, while calling the game, dropped the update for the fans that the NHL was returning for the 2025-26 season on October 7.

A triple-game night, one of the games featured the defending back-to-back Stanley Cup Champions, the Florida Panthers. And Brown made the mistake of asking his co-commentator Ben McDonald for an opinion related to the NHL. “Panthers, 3-peat? What do you think?” asked Brown. And it just started the comedy of errors. “If you say so. Good luck to them,” McDonald replied without much interest.

And he bluntly asked, “Are you asking me if I’m going to be watching (NHL Opening Night)?” Brown tried to direct McDonald towards a more amicable tone that didn’t seem disrespectful towards hockey, but Ben McDonald didn’t catch it. And the reply was simple from the latter. “There is zero chance I’ll be watching. I am just going to be honest with you,” before adding that he’d be somewhere, though definitely not tuning in.

This response brought the hockey fans out with their pitchforks, many saying Ben McDonald disrespected hockey and the NHL. But now that we have McDonald’s side of the story, we know what it was. An honest answer from a guy who had no relation to hockey whatsoever. And he definitely didn’t dress up his comments on air. Well, Ben McDonald has never been known to do that.