Nine Little Slapshots.

I remember seeing one or two Peter Puck cartoons during the period breaks in NBC's NHL coverage in the 1970s. Ronnie Schell voiced Peter Puck and Peter would explain various rules of hockey, coaching strategies, and its penalties.

Around the same early 1970s period, NBC also ran another Hanna-Barbera-animated short with a dog character named Tackles during its halftime on its NFL coverage (NBC carried AFC home games on Sundays then until it was outbid by CBS in the 1990s). Tackles, voiced by Allen Melvin and using the Fumbles the dog character design from the "Where's Huddles" series, explained the rules and playcalling strategies of the National Football League. Tackles and Fumbles on "Where's Huddles?" wore a football helmet. Fumbles only barked and chased fussy neighbor Claude Pertwee's cat Beverly often. I think only 3 total "Tackles" shorts were aired.

My father is a big NFL fan...always had the tv on for the games.
Happened to glance at the tv that afternoon and saw the Tackles the dog character on the screen.

Unlike Sunday Night and Monday Night Football, Thanksgiving Day football games, playoff games, and the Super Bowl, where those games are all shown nationally (where every city and town in the country can see the game) ...Sunday morning/afternoon/late afternoon games are regional with certain parts of the country receiving the network feed from one game, usually with a team located in that regional market playing.

Network regional football game coverage can be tricky when done live...since halftimes at different games shown across the country on the same afternoon schedule can start at varied times with the network sports anchors awaiting a coordinated time to go live on camera and give updated scores and highlights, there was bound to be some extra filler time for some games in parts of the country until there is enough time on several regional game broadcasts to share the same live studio halftime score report.

Instead of having the studio anchors fill the time with game recaps and repeating the scores from other games over again or with non-sports related chit-chat until they get the cue to go live on another game halftime broadcast or turning the time over to local network affiliate stations for local news updates, NBC used the "Tackles" shorts to fill the time for a short period at irregular times.


I wasn't much of a sports fan as a child but any excuse to stick around and watch an already turned-on tv was a good one. ;-)

True. One of the episodes on YouTube includes the frontcap for Hockey Night in Canada.