I often can't watch games (why am I paying for Centre Ice?) so I put the audio streams on the NHL App and listen to teams radio broadcasters quite a lot. The extra challenge of describing the visual does separate the men from the boys.
My favourite by far is (was?) Chuck Kaiton of the Hurricanes. Good voice, great call. Did it without a colour guy for many years and he had a bit of everything you need. He was knowledgeable about the game, both in general and about the team. He was there when they were the Hartford Whalers too. He loved the game and explained it well to the many newbies in North Carolina. Not just the rules but he would explain very clearly why players did the things they did. Even during the flow of play. One I remember well was "Whitney circles back on holds up on the far boards, he's letting the far-side defenseman make the long 2nd period change before launching forward". He did that kind of stuff all the time. He interviewed well. He had a level of excitement about the game that didn't waver. He rarely screamed and he never went through the motions. Given the choice of several games I would often pick the Carolina game because of him.
I understand he was let go this summer by the team and I am disappointed to hear that. I heard he made a pro-Ron Francis remark after Francis was originally shuffled into the background but that is only rumour. There's a lot of change in Carolina with the new owner a some of it seems to be 'new broom sweeps clean' stuff.
The worst by far is Dean Brown in Ottawa. Constantly in a bad mood and heaven forbid if a referee makes a mistake. He will bitch and whine for ages and blow it completely out-of-proportion. He also will pontificate on other things and comes across like he thinks he is the only person left on Earth who has any common sense. He even has a go on non-Hockey things. I once heard him start one of his rants by literally saying "kids today..."
Bob Stauffer in Edmonton is the worst colour guy. I recognize that there is some serious bias in that but he's bad. Terrible homer and a long and inexcusable record of being a regime apologist. Often criticized for the latter, he sometimes does cue-card Crazy Ivans that sound so disingenuous it can be staggering. It's like the producer said "Bob your tongue is way too far up Lowe's butt tonight say something from this file I made"
As for the TV guys I agree that Cuthbert is great and Cole was great but has been tainted by the end of his career. I remember watching a game a few years ago with Cole and Harry Neale on colour. Cole was mispronouncing names 5 seconds behind the play all night while Harry filled in the gaps with weak analysis and anecdotes 20 years out-of-date.
One more comment. When I moved to Canada and my English was still shaky, Howie Meeker used to do in-between period analysis on his telestrator. A hockey player myself who had been told by my new Canadian coach that I had to learn team play and defence I took Meeker's play breakdowns very seriously. But his idiomatic language and gentle slide into incoherent rage left me, and my parents trying to help me, so confused. I'd sit there with my notebook and a pencil writing down bits of hockey wisdom that would be unintelligble as little as 10 minutes later while my father tried to find 'golly gee wilikers' and 'jumpin jehosaphats' in the dictionary and my mother would openly question whether Meeker was, in fact, speaking English. Drove us crazy at the time but is a wonderful memory now.
|