From YouTube to Sportsnet, professional Leafs fan Steve Dangle has become an unlikely media success (2024)

Steve Glynn was giving a tour, playing with his dog and telling a funny story all at the same time. Iggy, his three-year-old Goldendoodle —part golden retriever, part poodle and part disruptor —was pulling at a sock toy in Glynn’s left hand as he stood in the familiar blue room.

It might have been the most famous room in the most famous basem*nt in all of Oshawa. The aesthetic seemed to be governed by chaos, with dozens of NHL figurines and photos sprayed across the wall like the messy result of some colourful sneeze. But each figurine had a matching photo, and each photo had a story, like the one Glynn was telling about the famous defenceman during a two-day media junket.

Any photos taken on the first day of the junket were fine, Glynn said.

“Anything that was on the second day, all the players were rip-roaring hung over,” he said with a smile, motioning to the famous defenceman. “His skin looks like a wallet. I don’t know if Advil has a smell, but he’s just rip-roaring hung over.”

Iggy, who had likely already heard the story, finally ripped the sock toy away and left the room. Glynn has carved out an unlikely living from telling stories within those blue basem*nt walls, sometimes with a scream and sometimes with a whimpering monologue about his beloved Maple Leafs.

Inside that room, in view of his trusty camera, Glynn is known by his nom de guerre, Steve Dangle, an eccentric fanatic who has been creating YouTube videos about the team for a decade. His audience for each video is routinely larger than 30,000, and his channel is closing in on 100,000 subscribers.

Depending on his mood, or depending on the game he is discussing, Glynn fills his videos with jump-cuts to give them a frenetic, almost frantic feel. His career can sometimes feel the same way, with his YouTube hobby having begat a podcast, television work and, as of March, a published memoir.

As with the photos on the wall, Glynn has an idea of what he is doing. He resists charting a path — the only thing he might hate more than a Leafs loss is being asked about his five-year plan —but he knows the general direction he wants to take across the roiling mass of the Canadian sports media landscape.

In the process, he has become an outlier, a professional fan. There is some thought, though, that the 30-year-old may actually also be a herald for the future of mainstream sports coverage.

Iggy sauntered back into the room as Glynn pointed to the photo of late Leafs goalie Johnny Bower. It was taken a year or two before Bower died, and Glynn was told he had undergone a dental procedure, and would not be able to speak for very long. Bower’s dentures popped out after his first answer.

Glynn laughed: “But then he just shoved them back in and goes, ‘alright, what’s next?’”

A photo of Phil Kessel was nearby. Glynn said Kessel had him blocked on Twitter when they met, but the Leafs winger did not acknowledge he knew him. James van Riemsdyk walked away with a hockey card Glynn had given him during their chat. Morgan Rielly was aware of the videos.

Goaltender James Reimer knew of Glynn, and knew of Glynn’s utter devotion to him. Luke Schenn had an idea, Glynn said: “I don’t think he was the biggest fan.”

“Once people have made up their mind about you, it’s difficult to change it,” he said with a shrug. “I think I’m an acquired taste for some people. You see me screaming my face off, and you go, ‘you know what? That’s not for me.’”

Gary Glynn furrowed his brow just a bit when asked about Steve Dangle, the name his eldest child had adopted for his on-screen persona: “I told him, ‘well, that sounds like a p*rn star or something.’”

He had a point, but he never had an objection.

Dangle began as a pen name at the student paper at Sir Oliver Mowat Collegiate Institute, a 15-minute walk from the Glynn family home in Scarborough. Gary and Tina raised Steve and his younger sister, Rachel, in a warm house on a quiet street, but the most exotic trip they took was to McDonald’s.

Rachel was born four months premature, and at only 1.5 pounds. She would later be diagnosed with cerebral palsy and autism. As Glynn writes in his soon-to-be-published memoir, “This Team is Ruining My Life (But I Love Them),” his sister’s arrival “shaped who I am today.”

Rachel required almost constant attention. The time commitment was one reason why Glynn was never registered in minor hockey. His father said they signed up for skating lessons one winter, but it was too late, and his son opted against returning the following year: “There were a lot of kids there who were younger than him, and who were skating way better than him.”

Glynn divined other ways of getting attention from the adults in his life.

He tried to make them laugh.

He was in elementary school when he started watching old George Carlin routines. He was attracted to the early works of Robin Williams, who joked about illicit drugs on stage before he moved into family-friendly Hollywood movies.

“Luckily,” Tina said with a smile, “the teachers didn’t get annoyed.”

In 2007, when he was a student at Ryerson University, Glynn met a young woman who held a part-time job at Future Shop. There was a webcam that was selling for $77, but with her employee discount, she could get it for only $23.

Glynn got the webcam, and he would eventually marry the young woman, Sarah-Louise.

The Dangle character that would come to define him was born soon after. The videos would evolve, but the initial spirit has remained. Glynn can be angry or funny or, often, a bit of both. He can jump around the room. He can speak in a voice that he has described as “my dad’s impression of a drunk person.”

It is not usually difficult to see where art imitates life.

“He is genuinely him,” said long-time friend Adam Wylde. “When you watch TV with him, he throws his phone, he gets upset. He is passionate that way. And this is what’s different: Usually, when you’re around people who get mad at hockey games, you’re like, ‘this is f*cking awkward, and I’ve got to get out of here.’

“With him, it’s very funny, and you just want to watch more of it.”

On the morning after many Leafs games, Harry Donkersgoed, the owner of G & H Small Engines, in Drayton, Ont., convenes a three-person panel. It consists of himself, the mechanic he has working for him and another die-hard Leafs fan who usually swings by the shop.

The panel gathers around the screen, in its small town 40 minutes north of Kitchener, and it listens intently to what Steve Dangle has to say.

“He’s got lots of energy,” said Donkersgoed, “and he really does know hockey.”

Donkersgoed, who turns 56 in July, also listens to The Steve Dangle Podcast. He watches Sportsnet for any appearances Glynn makes on air. He has already ordered a copy of the book.

“Every true Leaf fan wants to talk about the last game the Leafs played, whether they played good or bad,” said Donkersgoed. “And quite often, he gives you a different perspective of it. He gives you a real perspective of it, as a true fan.”

In an era before YouTube, Donkersgoed would likely have never encountered Glynn. And Glynn, in an era without direct access to an audience, might have ended up as that animated office colleague who is really fun to watch a game with at the bar.

It is difficult to trace the path Glynn has taken into the mainstream, where he now works with Sportsnet in addition to his regular podcast and YouTube duties. There are potential predecessors in music as well as in sports television, but they are both imperfect parallels.

John Ruskin was a Vancouver-based radio host who developed an innovative character to confuse and amuse the music industry. As Nardwuar, the high-pitched, well-researched reporter in the field, he was adept at getting subjects and colleagues out of their comfort zone.

“He is, as far as I know, the only sober journalist ever thrown out of the press room at the Juno Awards,” pop culture critic Chris Dafoe wrote in The Globe and Mail, in June 1992.

“He is the future of rock and roll,” musician Dave Bidini wrote in the Toronto Star, the following year.

Cabral Richards, known more widely as Cabbie, is the closest comparable in sports. With heightened energy and unique questions, Richards discovered new avenues in which to explore the often hidden personalities in professional sports.

Richards and Ruskin built new pathways onto the air, but their innovations were both within the norms of conventional television. Both generally built their audience based on the strength of their work with other people. Glynn built his audience by yelling at a webcam in his basem*nt.

“When I speak at schools, I always say that everybody now has the ability to form their own media company,” said Scott Moore, who resigned as president of Sportsnet in October. “It’s just a matter of how well you do it.”

What Glynn has done over the past decade, he said, is build a unique brand.

“And he’s done that pretty much from scratch,” said Moore. “I think it’s a good lesson that, if you have the right content, if you create a good personality or brand —and you’re entertaining —you can create enough of a brand and enough of an audience that media companies might take notice.”

Making it to a mainstream network is still the end goal for now, Moore said, because there is no way to make a comfortable living strictly on YouTube unless the size of the audience is in the millions. (Glynn agreed, describing his income from YouTube as: “We carpeted our basem*nt in Oshawa … sometimes we buy organic bananas.”)

Beyond broadening his choices of fruit, Moore believes Glynn could also end up as a beacon for young media hopefuls to follow. Cutbacks across the industry have weakened regional broadcast affiliates, an interconnected web that once served as a farm system for funnelling new on-air talent to the big stage.

“That farm system no longer exists, because most local affiliates don’t do sports,” said Moore. “So where do the new on-air personalities come from? And if you’re a smart, young, media-savvy person, you create that for yourself.”

Chris Clarke was one of the first mainstream media executives who tried to find a place for Glynn, as a personality on the team-owned Leafs TV. Glynn, who was in his third year at Ryerson, would appear on a half-hour show called Leafspace, a blend of emerging social media trends and interactions with fans.

“He showed me these videos that he did of him in his basem*nt, going squirrely over the Leafs,” said Clarke. “And I’m like, ‘this is what we need.’

“Did I ever think, in a million years, that I’d be talking to you about him and his book? Not a chance.”

Clarke laughed.

“He was ahead of his time,” he said. “It wasn’t being done back then.”

Sasky Stewart, a social media expert who worked for the Leafs, as well as with the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, said Glynn has an appeal that comes across well online. Stewart, who has known him for the better part of a decade, said he comes across as both accessible and approachable.

“Steve has this massive audience that has come there because they want to see his content,” she said. “They are interested in his message, and they have bought into his brand. And that kind of authenticity —particularly with a younger market —is really kind of hard to get.”

The corporate value in his audience is in how organically it was grown, she said. Glynn did not have to buy highway billboards, radio air time or targeted Facebook advertisem*nts to convince people to listen to him rant and rave about the Leafs.

That background can also cause tension.

“I think that Steve’s different, and that’s scary,” said Wylde, his friend and podcast collaborator, who hosts the morning show on Virgin Radio 99.9 FM in Toronto. “Everybody in broadcasting is a little scared right now, and if you’re not, you’re probably not doing your job.”

Wylde cited Sportsnet personalities such as Nick Kypreos, Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman as being among those who “get” what Glynn does online and on-air. Some —he declined to offer names —are less collegial.

“I have seen people on the air roll their eyes, and it’s a shame,” he said. “I get upset. Guys like Nick try to understand. Elliotte tries to understand. Jeff Marek does 100 percent. They’ve always been gracious, kind and polite. And then there’s other people who just aren’t.”

Wylde said the podcast reached around four million sets of ears last year, between YouTube and audio listens. They have two episodes a week, and it has been averaging between 80,000 and 90,000 listens a week. He said they have never paid for advertising, with the show growing strictly on word of mouth and social media.

Glynn has more than 123,000 followers on Twitter.

“I was there with him the first time he ever got noticed in public,” said Justin Fisher, who has been Glynn’s friend since high school. “And it was very funny.”

They were at a Marlies game, at Ricoh Coliseum. Specifically, they were in line to put ketchup and mustard on the hot dogs they had just purchased from the concession stand. Glynn was wearing his Leafs jersey — the one with the name Dangle on the back.

A young child approached Glynn and tapped him on the back.

“I’m a big fan,” the child said.

Glynn looked confused: “Of what?”

“You’re Steve Dangle, aren’t you?”

Glynn was stunned.

“He was so oblivious to it,” Fisher said, laughing.

The crowds, especially in events tailored around the Leafs, can be a little bigger now.

“It’s just the reality of hanging out with him,” said Fisher. “At any given time, he might go have a conversation with somebody and, like, not come back.”

“Toronto can be a tough market, especially when you’re not doing well as a team, or personally, or whatnot,” said former Leafs goaltender James Reimer. “So to have a guy in media who’s in your corner, it’s pretty priceless.”

Reimer had one such media guy in Toronto, and it was Glynn. (When the Leafs traded Reimer to San Jose in 2016, Glynn called the deal a “broccoli fart” in a video that generated almost 100,000 views.)

“There doesn’t seem to be too much superficial stuff, or whatnot, going about him,” Reimer said with a chuckle. “He speaks his heart.”

Did he have any idea why he emerged as Glynn’s favourite?

“When I played, I tried to be upfront with people,” he said. “I think most people saw that when I played, I tried to leave it all out there and play your heart out. Maybe he was able to relate with that.”

Reimer said he tries not to consume too much hockey media during the season, and now that he is with the Panthers, he generally does not dwell on what anyone is saying about the Leafs. That being said, he said he will still watch the odd Steve Dangle video: “It’s a good chuckle.”

Glynn does not like the idea of planning his career too far into the future.

“It’s like, you ever sort of look up at the night sky?” he said. “And if you think a little bit too hard about it, you get freaked out? It’s sort of like that.”

How much longer can he yell at a webcam?

“The idea of a 42-year-old with a YouTube channel, where he yells and screams about the Leafs, that seems so silly right now,” he said with a smile. “But in 12 years? I don’t know. There’s YouTubers with grey hair right now.”

Iggy had long since wandered upstairs. Glynn and his wife, Sarah-Louise, have dog-loving neighbours, and together they decided to knock a few boards from the fence that divides their property. In effect, it created a doggy door between both yards, so the dogs can play together when they’re outside.

There was almost no trace of the Leafs on the main floor, where Sarah-Louise was watching television on a cold, grey morning. The Leafs are mostly contained to the basem*nt, and they have done their best to contain Glynn’s booming voice, as well. They installed strips of soundproof foam, especially over the vents.

“Before, he could never record at night,” Sarah-Louise said, “because it would wake me up.”

She is a kindergarten teacher, and has to wake up early.

“Now, you’re at least able to fall asleep,” Glynn said.

“In the backyard, if you stand a little bit down the lawn, you can hear it through the window,” she said with a laugh. “I can only imagine what the neighbours think is going on in this house.”

(Top photo: CourtesyJen Squires, via ECW Press)