Because we've been talking about broadcasters so much in the B&B thread, here's a quick and dirty stratification of the people who call NHL games (or what former Hawks broadcaster Andy MacWilliams once called "the path of least resistance"):
GREAT TELECASTSChicago - duh.
Detroit - Ken Daniels and Mickey Redmond do a terrific job calling a game. Intelligent, descriptive, good voices. It's the perfect mix of professionalism, rampant homerism, and old time hockey that you'd want from a telecast. Lots of local sponsorships (Belle Tire is the big one) that remind you that you're dropping in on someone else's team. It's not quite on the level of the Cubs on channel 9, but Wings games do feel like a broadcasting institution of some sort.
Boston - Jack Edwards and Andy Brickley are really polarizing around the league, but again, same principle of dropping in on local TV elsewhere. I think it's awesome that Bruins games are called by two r-dropping New Englanders who can barely contain their love for the team. It's the same deal as Pat and Eddie, as a matter of fact. Edwards is good for one goofy outburst a night when I watch, and shit-talks some non-Bruins player/organization at least every other night (Dale Tallon once got up in his grill during a commercial break for suggesting that the Florida Panthers should just give up and move to Quebec City already).
Montréal en français - Immersion in French-language broadcasting is practically worth the price of Gamecenter for me. I think it was only last season that they added RDS to Gamecenter, but it was a tremendous gift. I don't know what it is, but hockey in French just sounds so right to my ears. As with the Expos, it's always fun to see how terminology and jargon translate to another language. For instance, "HE SCOOOOOOORES!" in French is "ET LE BUUUUUUUT!," or "(he shoots) and the goal!"
Long Island - Howie Rose is perpetually aggrieved at the cosmic injustice of having to call New York Islanders games, which gives a great flavor to the broadcast. He does Mets games in the summer, so it's like his suffering never ends. This is probably why no one cares that he often rants about what dumbasses Gary Bettman and the Isles' management both are, that and the fact that no one's watching anyway. Butch Goring was on the dynasty teams, famous for wearing a really shitty helmet (even by '80s safety standards) and is now a walking warning for CTE. He once tried to call a guy a "penalty-killer extraordinaire" but it came out "
penalty-killer EXXXcellent." Hahaha.
Buffalo - This is only when Rick Jeanneret is calling games, which he's been transitioning out of for years now. You can't beat his enthusiasm, classic hockey voice, all that, plus he calls the game for radio and MSG (which produces Sabres games hundreds of miles away, long story) just simulcasts him. Unfortunately, he's probably retiring after this season, and it's sad that his last years are being wasted on all-time bad Sabres teams.
ADEQUATEPhiladelphia - scores for a pack of Tastykakes! I like when Bill Clement works games for them.
New York - Sam Rosen and Joe Micheletti are good, whatever, I don't watch a lot of Rags games
New Jersey - they have some guy with an impenetrable JOISEY accent doing pxp since Doc Emrick's retirement, which on paper sounds terrible, I know, but I find it mildly endearing to have that kind of provincial flavor, and hey, at least he's not Doc Emrick.
Dallas - Man, everyone from Dallas is always like "oh you gotta hear Ralph and Razor, no one's better than Ralph and Razor, they play the radio in the concourse at Stars games so no one can ever not hear Ralph and Razor." Oh, they're whatever. Ralph Strangis is Just A Guy while Daryl Reaugh is just a big doofus who shouts wacky catchphrases. The Committed Indian guys are on Daryl Reaugh's jock now as a preferable alternative to Eddie Olczyk, which is funny because WHAT WOULD THE DIFFERENCE EVEN BE.
Carolina - John Forslund is really good but wasted on the minuscule audience and low production values of Raleigh. His sidekick is another weird Karmanos flunky and the intermissions are done by
a srs qt who, serious cuteness notwithstanding, probably has no business holding her job, even in Raleigh. The whole thing feels done by tin cans and string, but we had to get rid of that small Hartford market. whatever
San Jose - Another pair that the world seems to fawn over but I just don't get the hype. However, the Sharks fired the homer-doofus half of the pair, so this is kind of an incomplete. I think Randy Hahn was married to Joan Esposito and has been busted for meth. Cool dude. Kind of speaks in that stereotypical RADIO VOICE that we in the business call "puking," which is why I've always been reluctant to hail them as the league's best.
Tampa Bay - Rick Peckham might be the best play-by-play guy in the country, better than Forslund, definitely better than the jamokes at NBC. Great pipes, great rhythm to his call, just a real announcer's announcer. I forgot who does color for the Bolts, but it's some old guy, and he's an idiot, and I don't really care.
Florida - Goldstein is surprisingly competent for a guy doing hockey in a market where they lose in the local ratings to infomercials. I am not making this up.
Los Angeles - Again, the world seems to love these guys, I find Bob Miller highly competent but kind of dull. Kind of like the Kings in general.
St. Louis - Darren Pang is always fun, but the pxp guy (the original broadcaster's son and the brother of the guy who sucked at Hawks games while Foley was exiled to Rosemont) is a knob. Tends to say "OHHHH THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU" when the Blues score to tie/lead late, and I mean seriously, what a bitch. It just reminds me of this David Foster Wallace short storyabout a guy who at one point fantasizes about his co-worker, imagining that he'd be saying "thank you, thank you" while
he fucks
her. Barely adequate; I go out of my way not to watch Blues telecasts.
I WOULDN'T KNOWColumbus, Montreal in English, Anaheim, Colorado, Minnesota, Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Nashville (you seriously think I'd watch Nashville Predators games? I don't even like to watch them when they're playing the Hawks!). I omitted a lot of Canadian teams not because I don't watch them but because TSN/CBC poached so much of their local schedules that you'd only have a 60/40 shot at hearing the teams' own guys (and more like 40/60 for the Leafs). I omitted Columbus because it's Columbus.
BADVancouver - Not bad at their craft, but having to be this relentlessly partisan for the Canucks almost seems like as much a punishment for them as it is for me.
Winnipeg - The old Jets used to have one of those good mile-a-minute guys like John Wiedeman is, but the new Jets hired some guy who sounds like he has a whole canister's worth of tennis balls up his ass. Brian Engblom does color commentary for them now and then, and he's always good, but play-by-play at this constant strained half-yell is hard on me. Imagine how hard it is on the guy doing it!
Edmonton - You'd think that broadcasting for a hockey-obsessed market like Edmonton would be the one thing the shitty Oilers would still do right, but no, they can't do that either. Bad announcers. Fortunately, TSN and the CBC used to pick up a lot of Oilers games and whisk them away from Rogers Sportsnet, but now that Rogers has the national games, that can't happen.
Phoenix - They got Atlanta's old TV guy when the Thrashers folded and Dave Strader retired from working full-time, but the real problem is Tyson Nash, a second-rate homer doofus who can't talk. He's busted down from first-rate because his undying love for the Coyotes apparently goes into a coma whenever they play the Oilers.
Pittsburgh - Mike Lange is one of the all-time greats, but they have him doing radio while his old sidekick Paul Steigerwald does pxp on TV. He combines the starry-eyed homerism of Hawk Harrelson with the personality of wallpaper paste. Avoid at all costs. Let the other team's guys behold Sidney Crosby.
Washington - ANNOYING. FUCKING. VOICES. Craig Laughlin is a hoser beyond hosers, and Joe Beninati oh god just shut up, shut up, shut up, stop getting paid to talk into a microphone for people. Worst in the league. Painful.
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