But audience relations would contact me only if there was a crisis.

And that in a nutshell is the highwire act that is coach's corner, the weekly soap box for Don Cherry that occassionally strays off the hockey topic threatening all with reprimands or possible unemployment.

William Houston of the Globe and Mail provided a Coles Notes of sorts review of this weeks installment, a first intermission feature that seemed to find the "coach" in an ornery mood, made worse by his sidekick Ron McLean's introduction of a number of items into the agenda, items which it would appear seemed to annoy Cherry to the point of wanting to end the segment more than a few minutes early (anybody have some spare Peter Puck items for filler?)

From an incident in the Ottawa Chicago game, through the Chris Simon stomping, to Ted Nolan's contemplations of racism again rearing its head, the whole five minutes or so seemed to be veering towards a train wreck. It seemed that the fact that time ran out seemingly kept things from getting worse and possibly keeping the CBC from having to sort out the fall out from the public.

It's a double edged sword that segment, we're never really sure where the program is going to head and sometimes it touches raw nerves, and while Cherry and McLean do seem to rub each other the wrong way from time to time, you always sense it's part of the shtick.

Saturday you kind of got the feeling that may not have been the case this time around.