Peter Maher

Peter Holt Maher was the radio voice of the Calgary Flames from the franchise's arrival in Alberta in 1980 until his retirement after the 2013-14 NHL season. For 33 straight seasons on CFAC, Calgary's all-sports station, he called every Flames game and became one of the most familiar sounds in Canadian hockey. He died in Calgary on 13 August 2026 at the age of 79. The Flames announced his death the same day; Sportsnet and CBC News published tributes within hours.

Born on 11 November 1946 in Campbellton, New Brunswick, Maher began announcing softball lineups at 14. After high school he worked in the International Hockey League and North Shore Hockey League before turning professional. He called Toronto Maple Leafs radio play-by-play starting in 1977, then in 1980 became the first radio voice of the relocated Calgary Flames. Over 2,954 Flames games and 3,162 NHL games he coined catchphrases that Flames fans still quote: "Yeah Baby!" after a big moment, and "You can put it in the win column!" after every Flames win.

His career highlights included the 1986 Stanley Cup run, the 1989 Stanley Cup championship, and the underdog path to the 2004 Cup Final. In 2006 he received the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award and induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame as a media honoree. He is also in the Campbellton, New Brunswick and Maritime Sports Halls of Fame. At the 2010 Winter Olympics he called hockey for Sportsnet, including Sidney Crosby's "Golden Goal" for Canada, heard on radios across the country.

Maher announced his retirement on 29 April 2014. That November the Flames named a broadcast booth after him at the Scotiabank Saddledome and later created the Peter Maher Award for the player who best showed sincerity, integrity, dedication and respect. Those honours, and decades of archived calls, keep his voice part of how Calgary remembers its only Cup and its long radio tradition. He leaves a generation of listeners who grew up with his calls and a franchise that treated him as part of its identity.