John Garrett was discovered lifeless Monday afternoon in his hotel room in Salt Lake City while working the first-round National Hockey League playoff series between the Utah Mammoth and Vegas Golden Knights. He was 74.
Garrett had shifted three years ago to a less hectic national schedule for Sportsnet after years as a familiar voice on Vancouver Canucks regional broadcasts. For hockey fans in Vancouver, and for plenty of colleagues around the league, he was not just a broadcaster but one of the sport’s most recognizable companions in the booth.
He leaves behind his wife, Sharon, daughters Krista and Sarah, and grandchildren. Born in Trenton, Ontario, in 1951, Garrett was one of seven children raised by John and Marvel Garrett in Glen Miller. He rose from junior hockey with the Peterborough Petes to become a star goaltender, was drafted by the St. Louis Blues in 1971 and began his professional career in the World Hockey Association two years later.
His final WHA team was the New England Whalers, who later became part of the NHL in 1979. Garrett went on to appear in 207 NHL games and reached the 1983 NHL All-Star Game in Uniondale, New York. One of the most enduring footnotes of his playing career came when he assisted on Gordie Howe’s historic last goal, a line that linked him to one of hockey’s most famous moments.
That playing history mattered because it made Garrett credible before a camera and approachable away from it. He spent years as a longtime Vancouver Canucks television analyst, but the people around him talk just as much about how he carried himself as what he knew. Greg Shannon, a colleague and friend, said Garrett was “every guy,” the sort of person who could disappear into a crowd of 100 and still look like the man pumping gas at the station or standing next door. Shannon said there were no bad John Garrett stories and called him the most humble person he had ever met.
John Shorthouse, who worked closely with Garrett, said he could remember only two times Garrett lost his temper while they were together. One was in 2015, when Garrett and Dan Murphy helped Shorthouse get treated in Philadelphia before he flew home to Vancouver for an emergency operation. Shorthouse said Garrett was a delightful human being, someone who put everyone ahead of himself, and added that next to his father, Garrett was the most selfless person he had ever met.
Garrett’s death lands hard because it came while he was still doing the work that defined his second life in hockey, traveling with Sportsnet and covering a playoff series that had drawn the league’s attention. That leaves the sport with the loss of a former player, a national broadcaster and a man many around him describe in the same breath: steady, modest and impossible to replace.
