From NHL Goalie to Hockey Broadcaster

By Lucas Aykroyd

If you owned a broadcasting company and believed all the old stereotypes, you’d never let a former goalie become a fixture on your hockey telecasts.

After all, aren’t goalies supposed to be the craziest guys in the sport? When they’re not willingly throwing their bodies in front of 100-mph slapshots, they’re talking to their goalposts or getting sick in the washroom or spinning wild yarns about their past lives. Put a microphone in front of a goalie, and not even Wayne Gretzky or Scotty Bowman could predict what he’ll do!

Real life, however, defies the stereotypes. Former NHL netminders provide some of the most articulate, insightful, and respected voices in today’s hockey broadcasting world. And on a per-capita basis, compared to ex-NHL forwards and defensemen, there’s a disproportionate number of retired goalies doing color commentary.

There’s Daryl Reaugh in Dallas and Glenn “Chico” Resch in New Jersey. There’s Darren Pang in Phoenix and Brian Hayward in Anaheim. The list goes on as you travel around North America, including familiar names like Greg Millen, Glenn Healy, and Kay Whitmore, many of whom have worked for multiple stations and networks.

Probably the most widely recognized face is John Davidson, whose 301-game NHL career peaked in 1979 when he backstopped the New York Rangers to the Stanley Cup Finals. “J.D.” went straight into broadcasting with the MSG Network after retiring due to injuries in 1983, and he’s covered more than 1,500 games alongside Rangers play-by-play man Sam Rosen. The 53-year-old Alberta-bred veteran has also brought his enthusiastic, well-informed style to the likes of NBC, OLN, ABC, Fox, ESPN, SportsChannel, TBS, Prime Sports, CBS, and CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada. Basically, you can’t miss Davidson, especially when you factor in his experience with international tournaments.

Another mustachioed former goalie named John is very familiar to TV viewers in Western Canada. Sportsnet Pacific’s John Garrett forged his playing reputation as a WHA workhorse in the 1970’s and then had NHL stints with Hartford, Quebec, and Vancouver.

As it happens, the Ontario-born 54-year-old got his start in the business partly due to John Davidson: “1985-86 was my last year of pro hockey, and at the time, John Davidson was doing Western games for Molstar, who produced Hockey Night in Canada and the mid-week games out West. John Shannon, who was in charge at the time, had seen me interviewed as a player and knew my end was coming close. He asked if I would be interested in getting into broadcasting, because John Davidson was going to the Rangers. They had an opening, and I did a couple of tapes. The first year, I had about 26 games. Then it grew, and it got to the point where I am now.”

This experienced color commentator believes it’s no coincidence so many masked men have become media mavens: “As a goalie, you have to pay attention to everything, rather than just one specific area, both in practices and in games. In practice, you have to watch the whole scope of the action, whereas if you’re a right defenseman or a left winger, in certain drills all you have to do is circle in the corner, take a pass, and feed the centerman going up the middle. It can be very limited. During games, the goalie is out there for the full 60 minutes. You don’t go to the bench and sit for four or five minutes where you don’t really have to pay attention. You have to watch, and your peripheral vision has to be good. You have to read plays. It’s like catching in baseball. There are a lot of catchers in baseball who turn into color analysts, a lot of quarterbacks in football, and a lot of goalies in hockey.”

The typical netminder who becomes a broadcaster is one that played well enough and long enough to earn the respect of both players and fans, but wasn’t necessarily a Hall of Fame candidate. Of course, especially in recent years, most legendary goalies have banked enough money that they don’t need to get into TV or radio to support themselves.

Yet Garrett says there’s another factor to consider: “It’s also about having the personality to last a long time. You can be an obstinate goaltender and survive and play a long time if you’re Patrick Roy or Eddie Belfour. But the guys who were in the middle of the pack talent-wise and lasted a long time knew how to get along with their teammates and were able to get through the ups and downs of their careers, realizing longevity is something you can accomplish if you just put your mind to it. In broadcasting, you can’t please everybody all the time, and you need to have a thick skin. As a goaltender, that’s one thing you acquire very early in your career, or you’re never going to last.”

Back when many of today’s commentators were still playing, goaltending styles were quite different. Standing up as much as possible was often recommended. Charging out of the net to challenge shooters was another common tactic. Laying the paddle down to stop wraparounds? Going down in a butterfly stance? Uncommon, to say the least. So how hard is it for the likes of John Garrett to accurately critique what new millennium netminders are doing?

“When I was playing, there was a fear factor about getting hurt by the puck,” the Vancouver resident says. “Now you have the fear factor in terms of getting run over, but not of the shots anymore. Sure, the techniques are different. But the mental aspect of goaltending is still the same. That’s where the former goalies have good insight. You can figure out all the technical parts of the game. It hasn’t changed that much. The positioning is different, everybody can shoot harder, the sticks are better, and there’s a lot more traffic now. But the mental part of the game is something where unless you’ve actually been there at the NHL level, it’s pretty hard to understand.”

In terms of broadcasting techniques, Garrett says he’s benefited by regularly working alongside Jim Hughson, one of the best play-by-play announcers in hockey, on Vancouver Canucks telecasts. He’s developed a sense of when to jump in and when to let Hughson keep the excitement level up with his stentorian descriptions.

Being concise is a big key for Garrett, who knows 10 or 15 seconds is sometimes all the time you get to make a point on-air, especially in today’s speeded-up NHL game. As he recalls with a wry chuckle, he wasn’t quite so concise when he did his first-ever broadcast in the fall of 1986: “I got into a long diatribe about some coach. At the time his team wasn’t playing very well, and I compared it to a Robert Ludlum novel. My producer got in my ear and said: ‘The viewers out there don’t want to hear about Robert Ludlum! They want to hear about what’s going on in the game.’ I was going on and on. I was talking over the play, and we almost missed a couple of goals while I was babbling.”

Garrett may be more polished today, but he’s still got the same passion for hockey he showed while suiting up for the OHL’s Peterborough Petes 35 years ago. “Broadcasting is the closest you can get to playing, other than coaching,” he says. “Good coaches like Glen Hanlon or Darryl Sutter have proven themselves by starting out in the minors. Marc Crawford spent five years in St. John’s, Newfoundland. I don’t know whether I’d have the patience to do that. That’s one reason I tried to get into broadcasting, and I’m enjoying every second of it.”

Kelly Hrudey followed a different path into this field, but the veteran of 677 NHL games with the New York Islanders, Los Angeles Kings, and San Jose Sharks has succeeded in carving out his own niche with CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada.

Playing during the Wayne Gretzky era, Hrudey helped L.A. make the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals versus Montreal. The following year, the blue bandanna-wearing netminder also had Gretzky to thank (indirectly) for his first stint behind the mike. The Kings missed the playoffs by one point, and CBC invited the Great One to serve as a guest commentator. When Gretzky declined, Hrudey was their second choice. He came across so well on air during subsequent non-playoff years that he was offered a permanent position upon retiring in 1998. The 45-year-old Edmonton native now offers a more nuanced, less abrasive alternative to Don Cherry during his opinion-based “Behind the Mask” segments. He also hosts the popular “After Hours” along with Scott Oake or Elliotte Friedman, featuring in-depth post-game conversations with players.

Even as an active NHLer, Hrudey was laying the ground for his later career. “I really loved the idea of being interviewed,” he explains. “Each and every time I was asked questions, I wanted to give more thoughtful answers than some of the ones I’d been witnessing. Not that you have to be brutally honest or sell anybody down the river, but you can be thoughtful.”

He also got a front-row opportunity to hone his analytical skills when he served as a backup to Team Canada’s Grant Fuhr during the 1987 Canada Cup. The final three-game series between the host nation and the Soviets has sometimes been dubbed the best hockey ever played. “You’re talking about the game going to a level that I probably didn’t know existed,” Hrudey says. “I wasn’t only in awe of the Canadian team that I was part of but also the Russians, as well as other teams we faced during the tournament. I really got a grasp of how good hockey was becoming, not only in North America but also around the world. I got to see those players and how differently they watched the game and played the game. That was a big growing experience.”

Trained in-house by Hockey Night in Canada, Hrudey has found that much like playing goal at a high level, preparing for one of the most famous programs in all sports requires constant vigilance. After returning home from a Saturday night assignment, he begins by watching as many hockey games as possible starting on Sunday and continuing through Thursday. He keeps the TV volume off to avoid being influenced by the opinions of other broadcasters. In between games, he reads the latest news and talks with experts around the league as well as his CBC colleagues.

Friday is a travel day, and Saturday features a jam-packed schedule. It starts with a 9 a.m. breakfast meeting and continues with attendance at the morning skate for both teams. After a brief return to the hotel to freshen up and get his TV suit on, Hrudey typically spends almost the entire day at the arena, getting ready for his segments in the second half of the HNIC double-header. He’ll leave the arena close to 11 o’clock.

Funnily enough, Hrudey finds that he’s recognized much more frequently on the street nowadays than he was during his goaltending career. “I think it’s a hundred or thousand times greater now,” he says. That’s partly attributable to the passion Canadians have for sharing their hockey opinions. At the same time, Hrudey rarely if ever took off his mask when he was involved in a game. “I just wanted nobody to really recognize me, which is odd when you consider I went on to television!”

With his background, Hrudey is sensitive to the issues players sometimes have with the media. He tries to schedule interviews at times that are convenient for the athletes, as he recalls not liking it when reporters kept asking him questions for more than an hour after a game had ended.

“I was so fortunate to be around Gretzky for all those years in Los Angeles,” Hrudey adds. “He was so gracious in handling all the media attention, and he recognized there was an importance to it. The thing I would recommend for both sides is, ‘Let’s try to remain as positive as possible, and let’s work together as partners.’ If you feel like you’re partners, things can go farther than just a one-on-one interview with no meaning or depth.”

Addressing the challenges goalies have faced in the 2005-06 season, Hrudey believes there’s a balance to be struck when it comes to the newfound ability of forwards to go to the front of the net: “You have to be careful with the contact that’s happening. Goaltenders are our most dominant players, and we don’t want those players injured. But I don’t mind a little bit of incidental contact. Over the previous six years, goalies were so well-protected that this is new for them, and they’re not used to it. I think it’s part of the game, and goalies need to learn how to deal with it.”

How about the restricted puckhandling zone behind the net? Hrudey contends it’s been somewhat effective: “I kind of like the idea that they can’t play the puck in some places, only because some of the guys were so good at doing it that it really took away the opportunity to forecheck. Now, if a team dumps the puck in wisely, I think they have a chance to retrieve it, whereas before the new rules were in place, a lot of the goalies were able to clear the zone.”

Hrudey now looks forward to analyzing the NHL playoffs, which have been televised on Hockey Night in Canada for more than 50 years. As the tradition continues in 2006, he’ll be contributing insights that only a former masked man could come up with.

With articulate color commentators like John Davidson, John Garrett, and Kelly Hrudey setting the example, the stereotype of the loopy, out-of-control goalie may finally meet its well-deserved demise.