Ron MacLean, co-host of the CBC’s Hockey Night, found an interesting way to spend his day off in Philadelphia between Stanley Cup Finals games.  “There was already a man in the water helping someone who’d tried to take his life and I don’t know if Ron jumped in, too, but yes, he was part of a team of two who saved someone’s life,” MacLean’s wife Cari told the Vancouver Province.

From the Canadian Press:

MacLean was having lunch on a patio by the Delaware River with Don Cherry when a woman with a “heavy French accent” came in and said “help, help there’s someone in the water.”

Don Cherry, MacLean’s Hockey Night co-host famous for his blowhard persona and colorful outfits, apparently stayed seated and presumably kept eating.  But MacGyver-like, MacLean sprung into action.

“I grabbed a velvet rope off one of the dividers they have in the restaurant,” said MacLean. “I thought that’d be useful to help pull the guy out of the water.”  When MacLean got to the water, a man he though was the French-accented woman’s boyfriend had already got the drowning man onto a raft, but hotel employees used MacLean’s velvet rope to pull the pair in.  MacLean may have also helped pull the velvet rope. MacLean did make sure to give the boyfriend his props: “He’s the guy who saved him.”

Best part of the story is what MacLean says happens when he got back to his table:

When I finally get back to Don, he said, ‘Well that’s just great, I was telling a great story about Dave Bolland and you go running off.’

Bolland, Blackhawks center, has scored 6 goals this postseason and is far more interesting than some dude trying to kill himself in a river in Philadelphia.