1 week Ago By Lynn Saxberg
The last time the Ottawa Senators made it to the Stanley Cup finals, Kenzie Lalonde was a pre-teen fangirl who’d already been playing hockey most of her life. Now 30 and a rising star in the world of sports broadcasting, she remembers the excitement of watching the playoff games on television at her family’s home in Stittsville and how she and her friend Jess would celebrate each and every one of the Sens’ goals. “Every time the Sens scored, we would hop on our bikes, do a lap around our crescent and try to get people to honk and cheer,” Lalonde recalled in a recent interview.
“We’d bike it as fast as we could and time it so that, by the time we came back into the house — after the replay sequence and all that ended — we wouldn’t miss any of the game.” Of course, the two girls never actually incited the riotous celebration they envisioned because all the neighbours were indoors watching the game, too. But they had a blast, at least until their beloved Sens lost the Cup final to the Anaheim Ducks.
Despite her disappointment at that “devastating” loss, Lalonde describes those playoff victory laps as a “core Senators childhood memory” in an upbringing that revolved around sports, whether playing, attending, watching games on television or listening to them on the radio. Her favourite player growing up was Ottawa enforcer Brian McGrattan, while her ability to describe a player’s style comes from watching men like Mike Fisher and Daniel Alfredsson handle the puck and hearing the voice of Dean Brown, the Sens’ long-time play-by-play announcer. Another memory from her childhood involves listening to the sports report on the radio while eating her cereal and getting ready for school.
When Holly Horton was the anchor, young Kenzie was intrigued. “How cool is that. Her full-time job is to talk about sports,” Lalonde said, adding that she would daydream about doing the same thing someday.
But first she played. Lalonde was on skates by the age of three, initially in ringette, and then hockey. Her older brother, three years her senior, was also a serious hockey player.
For their parents, Rob and Sandi, it meant a lot of driving. “The lifestyle we always had was (that) we were away at tournaments on weekends,” Lalonde said. “Our parents were like taxi drivers for us.
” At the same time, Lalonde credits the family’s commitment to a busy sports schedule for instilling her willingness to work hard and take on more duties. The bilingual Ottawa native has been TSN’s bureau reporter in Montreal for three seasons, primarily responsible for covering the Montreal Canadiens and Montreal Alouettes. She also covers women’s hockey, from the Esso Cup to the PWHL, including the IHHF Women’s World Championship in Czechia this month.
But what’s more significant is that this season she became the first woman in TSN history to announce the play-by-play for a televised NHL game. She called the Nov. 12 game between Ottawa and Toronto, a victory that went to Ottawa by a 3-0 score.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Kenzie Lalonde (@kenzzzzers) In her typically understated, get-the-job-done fashion, Lalonde didn’t crow about the achievement, partly because she’s called plenty of games before and since that particular Battle of Ontario. “I had done the Montreal Canadiens on radio prior to that, and a handful of games at the NHL level,” she explained. “It’s just that it was my first televised one with TSN, and it seems so long ago now.
I’ve done a bunch since then. It’s been a crazy run.” Lalonde tried other extracurricular activities as a youth, including soccer and dance, but hockey was her main obsession.
She switched from a boys’ league to one for girls around the age of nine and never looked back. “Hockey is part of the identity here in Ottawa,” she said. “People talk about Toronto or Montreal as hockey cities, but I think they sometimes forget about Ottawa.
It’s a very sport-centric community. “When I switched over to girls’ (hockey) at atom, that would have been about 2000, it makes you realize Ottawa already had a strong female minor hockey association in the early 2000s. And now there are many different teams and associations in the women’s minor hockey scene (in Ottawa).
It’s not the same across Canada. “It just goes to show the growth — even a tiny little town like Stittsville was big enough to have its own association. That’s quite significant.
” Lalonde continued playing Canada’s game through her teen years at Sacred Heart High School, serving as a forward for the U22 elite-league Ottawa Lady Senators. But, with games across Southern Ontario almost every weekend, maintaining the pace was a challenge. She longed for a social life.
“I missed a lot of school,” Lalonde recalled, describing the routine. “You missed class on Friday and it’s late Sunday night, and you still have to do the homework for Monday morning and you’re just exhausted. I am unfortunately someone who can’t do work in the car or I get nauseous.
It was a very taxing time in my life.” Again, though, it prepared her for her current lifestyle. “I don’t know a life without a busy sports schedule,” she said, “and I think it really helped me mentally to understand what it takes to be successful, what it means to be part of a team, and how you need to prioritize your roles and responsibilities in your life if you want to execute something.
” Lalonde rediscovered her love of hockey when she found her way to Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B. She earned a business degree while playing for the women’s hockey team, the Mount Allison Mounties, spending two years as team captain.
Sackville was also where she decided to “scratch the itch,” as she put it, of sports broadcasting. “I was like, ‘Let’s try it. Let’s try interviewing athletes,’” she said of her decision to host a YouTube channel featuring her interviews with fellow student athletes.
“I really liked it, and so that was when it all actually started for me in realizing it could maybe be a profession.” Her talent on camera did not go unnoticed. The blue-eyed brunette was well-prepared for every interview, expressed herself articulately and asked the right questions, coming across as smart and likable.
No matter the sport, she clearly knew what she was talking about. One of her interview subjects said she had a combination of confidence, professionalism and presence. After graduation, Eastlink, the community TV station in the Maritimes, hired Lalonde as a full-time sports reporter, and then TSN came calling.
She got the TSN job in Montreal in 2022, calling it a “dream” opportunity. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Claire Hanna (@clahanna) Mind you, there have been naysayers along the way, almost always male, who objected to a female voice calling their precious game. It’s worth noting the negative comments don’t attack her ability to keep up in a fast-paced game; they bash her for simply being a woman.
“Sometimes it’s just the gender that seems to be the issue for a lot of the population,” Lalonde observed, “and yet it’s so powerful and so exciting for others. It is what it is, I guess, and I’m just excited for it to become more normal and for more women to try it.” Lalonde paused for a moment to reflect on how she was influenced by Holly Horton, and how cool it is that she might be influencing the next generation.
“As corny as it sounds, I’m a product of ‘If you can see it, you can be it,’ and hopefully that can be paid forward and inspire other girls,” Lalonde said, giving her three-year-old niece, Kennedy, as an example. “Kennedy won’t know a world without pro women’s hockey now. How exciting is that?” lsaxberg@postmedia.
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