Announcer Milestones from (Most Of) March 2024

For as much as March seems to be dominated by basketball in the sports media landscape, the announcing milestones of the month seem to be dominated by hockey. What chaos, as Mike Emrick used to say. Some of you might even call it … madness. (This post will conclude with the games of Sunday, March 24, which is the last Sunday before Major League Baseball entered the chat with its 2024 season.)

For the sake of of setting the ground rules, we have five main lists: NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL in the U.S. and NHL in Canada. There are also three other lists that exist only by combining those five: NHL totals, totals in the four American leagues, and totals in the five leagues across the board.

Commentators are sorted into three groups – play-by-play, analysts and reporters – and each list has a total column as well. At the moment, these figures only count pro sports, not because I don't think college sports should count but because we had to draw the line somewhere because there are only so many hours to track this stuff. All data is taken from the 506 Sports Archive.

The first installment of this series covers January 2024 and can be found here. The second, which deals with February as you might expect, is here.

Speaking of Emrick, he was the first person to get passed this month. Craig Simpson, the lead Hockey Night in Canada colour commentator since 2008, called a Rangers-Maple Leafs telecast on Saturday, March 2, for his 1,082nd national NHL telecast between the U.S. and Canada. That broke a tie with Emrick for seventh place on that leaderboard. Simpson created the tie a week earlier with the Maple Leafs’ visit to Colorado. Chris Cuthbert and Kyle Bukauskas joined Simpson for both games.

Moments after the Rangers-Maple Leafs game ended, another Hockey Night stalwart hit a milestone of his own, although this one was a round number rather than forging or breaking a tie. The Penguins’ visit to Calgary marked Greg Millen’s 900th national NHL telecast to Canada as an analyst, making him the fourth colour man to the nonacentennial plateau (trailing Simpson, Harry Neale and Dick Irvin). Harnarayan Singh handled play-by-play and Scott Oake reported.

The next milestone didn’t belong to an individual announcer but the history of Canadian hockey broadcasting as a whole. On Sunday afternoon, March 3, Sportsnet 360 picked up the TNT telecast of the Devils’ visit to Los Angeles, and the play-by-play announcer for that game, Kenny Albert, became the 35,000th commentator entered in the Canadian NHL listings. As of this writing, Albert accounts for close to 1 percent of all the commentator entries in our five main listings (and his father Marv accounts for close to another 1 percent), so this is not his first rodeo on the milestone listings. Ed Olczyk and Brian Boucher worked the game with the younger Albert and followed him into the history books.

Like a trailing point on a railroad track, Rogers reporters Ryan Leslie and Shawn McKenzie combined to move past Brian Engblom as two movements merged into one over the first full week of March. Engblom served as a reporter for 197 national NHL telecasts, mostly on ESPN in the 1990s and early 2000s, and that total ranked 16th on the binational list of NHL reporters. Then it didn’t. On Monday, March 4, McKenzie matched Engblom’s total when he worked a Bruins-Maple Leafs telecast with Cuthbert and Simpson. Before that game had quite finished, Leslie created a three-way tie by reporting on the Kraken-Flames game alongside Rick Ball and Kelly Hrudey. In fact, the Sportsnet audience watching McKenzie’s game would go on to join Leslie’s game in progress. McKenzie finished the pass on Wednesday, March 6, with a Sabres-Maple Leafs game called by the same crew, and Leslie passed Engblom the next night on Flames-Lightning with Millen in for Hrudey.

Back on the basketball court, TNT analyst Stan Van Gundy combined with his brother Jeff, who analyzed 15 NBA Finals for ABC, to reach the 1,000-game plateau in their announcing careers. As of the Celtics-Nuggets game on March 7, which the elder Stan called with Brian Anderson and Chris Haynes, Jeff had worked 857 national telecasts and Stan 143 to rack up 1,000. At that point, another TNT analyst had combined with his sister to work 1,097 games: Reggie Miller had called 664 games and Cheryl Miller 433.

Jeff Van Gundy’s longtime partner, Mike Breen, moved up the overall total list on Saturday, March 9. Breen called his 1,090th national telecast, passing Emrick for #13, when ABC televised a Celtics-Suns game from Phoenix in their weekend primetime slot that saw Breen work with Doris Burke, JJ Redick and Lisa Salters. Breen had forged the tie three nights earlier on an ESPN telecast of Bucks-Warriors with Bob Myers and Jorge Sedano.

Further west, McKenzie hit a milestone the same night as he became the 16th person to report on 200 NHL telecasts between the U.S. and Canada. John Shorthouse and Jamal Mayers were in the booth for the puckhandling plateau, which aired on Citytv and Sportsnet One.

TNT’s lead NBA play-caller, Kevin Harlan, spent Pi Day bringing home the bacon in Boston, where it may well have been a clam chowder ingredient. The second Suns-Celtics meeting in six days was his 1,400th national telecast among the four major pro sports, covering the NFL and NBA in Harlan’s case. He became the third announcer to hit that milestone in the United States, trailing Marv Albert and Dick Stockton; including Canada, Bob Cole and Cuthbert have also done so, although Cuthbert has not yet reached that point on play-by-play alone. Reggie Miller and Allie LaForce joined Harlan on the broadcast.

Back on the left coast, another TNT play-by-play announcer moved up, although this particular telecast aired in Canada on Sportsnet East, Ontario and Pacific. The Massachusetts-born John Forslund called his 448th national NHL telecast on play-by-play, breaking a tie with Dan Kelly, who hailed from Ottawa but drew acclaim as the voice of the St. Louis Blues. Forslund worked the Capitals-Kraken game for the Kraken local feed with JT Brown, Alison Lukan and Piper Shaw, and had joined Brown and Shaw two nights earlier for the tying game against the Golden Knights.

Citytv and Sportsnet One were home to an NHL reporting milestone for the second straight Saturday on March 16 when Leslie became the 17th rinkside rover to report on 200 national telecasts between the U.S. and Canada, repeating McKenzie’s feat of a week earlier. Ball and Millen staffed the booth for a Canadiens-Flames affair that also aired on CBC.

Later that night on CBC, longtime reporter Scott Oake moved up the NHL listings with his 1,256th telecast, passing Dick Irvin for fourth place. The Avalanche-Oilers contest also aired on three of the four Sportsnet regional channels (everything but Pacific) alongside Sportsnet 360 with Singh and Louie DeBrusk on the call. Oake had tied Irvin a week earlier when the Canucks hosted the Jets on CBC, City, Sportsnet, Sportsnet One and Sportsnet 360; on that game, Dave Tomlinson was in the analyst chair rather than DeBrusk.

Another Hockey Night veteran passed a third fixture of winter Saturday nights north of the border, although it happened on a Wednesday when the Maple Leafs visited Washington on March 20. Chris Cuthbert’s 1,309th national NHL play-by-play call (combining the two countries we track) passed Jim Hughson for second-most on record, trailing Cole. Simpson handled color duties and McKenzie reported for Sportsnet. Simpson and Bukauskas were with Cuthbert four nights earlier on the same network when he tied Hughson as the Hurricanes visited Toronto.

South of the border, Darren Pang worked his 800th national NHL telecast (again combining the two countries) on the same Maple Leafs-Capitals game. In the United States, the telecast aired on TNT with Brendan Burke on the call and Tarik El-Bashir reporting.

While much of America was preoccupied with college basketball, the longtime voice of the NHL team near Tobacco Road hit an NHL milestone on Friday, March 22, as Forslund’s call of the Kraken’s visit to Arizona was his 450th national telecast between the United States and Canada. Only 11 other play-by-play voices have hit that number. Sportsnet picked up the Seattle telecast with Forslund, Brown and Shaw. (Incidentally, this is the last milestone telecast to date involving the Coyotes, who played their last game on April 17 before their franchise was suspended and its hockey-related assets transferred to Utah.)

Cuthbert wrapped up this edition of the milestone tracker on Saturday, March 23, which would have been the 95th birthday of Roger Bannister, the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. Cuthbert’s 1,310th national NHL play-by-play telecast between the United States and Canada passed Hughson again – Hughson picked up a single MLB telecast for ABC in 1994, so his total in our five main listings is 1,309, one more than the NHL total Cuthbert passed on March 20. That March 20 game, covered above, was Cuthbert’s tying telecast here.

At the close of that week, with baseball season looming on the horizon, Burke and Oake sat in ties that would not be broken until the next edition of this series.

Announcer Milestones From February 2024

If there are two things in life that are notorious for putting people to sleep, they are Thanksgiving turkey and bookkeeping details. Today is the fourth Thursday in November, so our staff (which is, uh, me) decided it was time to put a serving of both of those things on the same plate and get them out the door. Without further, let alone Freddy, Adu, here is the Un/Necessary Sports Research list of national telecast announcer milestones from February 2024.

For the sake of of setting the ground rules, we have five main lists: NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL in the U.S. and NHL in Canada. There are also three other lists that exist only by combining those five: NHL totals, totals in the four American leagues, and totals in the five leagues across the board. 

Commentators are sorted into three groups – play-by-play, analysts and reporters – and each list has a total column as well. At the moment, these figures only count pro sports, not because I don't think college sports should count but because we had to draw the line somewhere because there are only so many hours to track this stuff. All data is taken from the 506 Sports Archive.

The first installment of this series covers January 2024 and can be found here.

The stars of the NHL were out in full force in Toronto on Saturday, Feb. 3, even though the NHL All-Star Game took place at 3 p.m. local time. The four-team, 3-on-3 tournament counts as a single broadcast in our records because it’s still 60 minutes of hockey. Two-thirds of Rogers’ lead NHL crew moved up a leaderboard that day. Craig Simpson broke a tie with Harry Neale for the eighth-most appearances in NHL history, combining the U.S. and Canada, and the 16th-most appearances across our five main listings with his 1076th telecast. Kyle Bukauskas worked his 378th telecast as a reporter, passing Brian McFarlane for the ninth-most in our binational NHL records. Chris Cuthbert, the regular third man in that booth, helmed the telecast from the play-by-play position while analyst Kevin Bieksa and reporter David Amber made special All-Star Game appearances. Simpson had tied Neale on Jan. 27’s Maple Leafs-Senators telecast while Bukauskas tied McFarlane four days later on the Jan. 31 game between Nashville and Ottawa.

The following afternoon, the annals of broadcasting history shifted to London, and not the one that’s a couple of hours down the 401 away from Scotiabank Arena. At the Emirates Stadium in Holloway, on the north side of the English capital city, former Arsenal right back Lee Dixon broadcast his 380th Premier League fixture since NBC assumed broadcast rights in this country in 2013. That number represents an entire season of every match in the league or 10 seasons for a single club. Jon Champion and Graeme le Saux joined Dixon on the telecast.

Simpson edged his way past Neale again on Monday, Feb. 5, when the Maple Leafs hosted the New York Islanders as NHL regular-season play resumed. Again, the number was 1,076 appearances, but this time the category was different, counting only analyst appearances on NHL national telecasts to the U.S. or Canada. (Simpson was an ice-level reporter for ESPN on an Avalanche-Mighty Ducks game in 1998, which counted toward his overall total but not his analyst figure.) That gave Simpson sole possession of the number-two spot on the binational NHL analyst list, trailing only Pierre McGuire, and third place on the analyst list across all five main listings, also trailing Hubie Brown. For the second time in three days, Cuthbert joined Simpson across the Sportsnet family of networks; this time, Shawn McKenzie was the reporter.

Tuesday, Feb. 6, marked the fourth day in a row with a milestone as ESPN hockey analyst A.J. Mleczko moved up the American NHL rankings. Her 137th national broadcast as a color commentator, Avalanche-Devils on ESPN+ with John Buccigross, broke a tie with Darren Eliot for the 11th-most in our records. Mleczko, a two-time Olympic medalist, had tied Eliot on Jan. 23 when the Ducks hosted the Sabres.

Toronto has as good a claim as any city to being the ancestral home of national hockey broadcasting, since it was there that Foster Hewitt’s gondola hung in Maple Leaf Gardens to originate Hockey Night in Canada, and the city hosted a milestone for Hockey Night’s current lead commentator on Wednesday, Feb. 7. Chris Cuthbert became the third person in our records to handle play-by-play for 1,300 national NHL telecasts between the U.S. and Canada, reaching the plateau on a Stars-Maple Leafs telecast with Simpson and McKenzie. He trails Bob Cole and, at the time, Jim Hughson on the NHL list as well as Marv Albert, Dick Stockton, Kevin Harlan and Kenny Albert from the four main American lists.

Across the border in Boston, Mike Breen passed another longtime NBA broadcaster on the same night. The Hawks-Celtics game was Breen’s 1,085th national telecast between the NBA and NFL, pushing him ahead of Hubie Brown (a former Hawks coach) for the seventh-most appearances in our four American listings and 13th-most counting Canadian NHL work. JJ Redick was the color man and Andraya Carter reported. Breen had tied Brown on a Lakers-Knicks telecast the previous weekend with Doris Burke and Lisa Salters.

TD Garden was also the venue for a milestone the following night, albeit in a different sport and for a different country. Sportsnet reporter Dan Murphy, who primarily covers the Vancouver Canucks, reported on his 228th national telecast when Vancouver met the Bruins, passing Christine Simpson for the 13th most national reporterial repetitions in Canadian NHL history. John Shorthouse and Dave Tomlinson anchored the booth that night as they had when Murphy tied Simpson on Jan. 27 against Columbus.

The parade of milestones took a break on Friday, Feb. 9, but Hockey Night was at it again that weekend. Edmonton-based analyst Louie DeBrusk called the Oilers’ visit to Los Angeles on Saturday night: his 412th national NHL telecast to the U.S. or Canada broke a tie with McFarlane for 16th most for a colour commentator. Harnarayan Singh handled play-by-play and Scott Oake reported on that game after Jack Michaels and Gene Principe joined DeBrusk for the tying tilt in Las Vegas four nights earlier.

Early February saw a total of 11 milestones in a 10-day span which concluded with two more in a Calgary Flames road trip to the American portion of the East Coast. The Flames’ Sunday visit to the New York Islanders was the 192nd national NHL telecast of Ryan Leslie’s career, which moved him past Al Trautwig for 17th-most by a reporter between the U.S. and Canada. The next night in suburban Miami, colour man Greg Millen worked his 900th Canadian NHL telecast when the Flames visited the Panthers, which made Millen the ninth person to reach that mark. Play-by-play man Rick Ball called both bouts and was with Leslie and Kelly Hrudey when the former tied Trautwig on the Flames-Bruins game the previous Tuesday.

Following a midmonth slowdown that was helped in part by the NBA’s all-star break, Oilers-centric reporter and Prince of Puns Gene Principe got the derricks working again on Friday, Feb. 23 when he passed Frank Selke for the 11th-most appearances by a Canadian NHL reporter with his 264th game. That Wild-Oilers affair on the Albertan prairie was called from the booth by Michaels and DeBrusk, who had also been with Principe two nights earlier when Boston came calling and he tied Selke.

A colorful clash between the St. Louis Blues and the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday, Feb. 24, sent ESPN NHL reporter Leah Hextall up the leaderboard as well. (From 1979 to 2017, the Red Wings played in Joe Louis Arena: the building’s namesake, a Detroit native, was known as the Brown Bomber, which would have added to the colorful motif. The Red Wings have since moved to Little Caesars Arena, and anyway, we’re digressing.) That day, her 56th American national NHL telecast as a reporter allowed Hextall to pass Darren Pang for 10th place on that list. Bob Wischusen and Kevin Weekes called the game for ABC: Wischusen and the Blues were both involved in Hextall’s tying game, a Presidents’ Day matinee against the Maple Leafs, the previous Monday. Ryan Callahan handled color for the Monday game.

The dean of active NBA sideline reporters, Lisa Salters, reached her septuacentennial milestone later that night. The Celtics-Knicks game at Madison Square Garden on ABC was Salters’ 700th national telecast between the NBA and NFL: only Craig Sager has more sideline appearances in the four major American listings and Oake joins the list when we add Canadian NHL work. The game also broke a tie with Fox baseball insider Ken Rosenthal, who had 699 reporter credits at that point. Breen, Redick and Burke called the game with Salters: Breen and Burke also worked with her when she tied Rosenthal on the Feb. 10 Suns-Warriors game.

ESPN reporter Cassidy Hubbarth got in on the action on Sunday, Feb. 25, when she passed Heather Cox for ninth place on the NBA courtside reporter list by working her 182nd national telecast. Brown and Dave Pasch joined Hubbarth from the city of American independence as the 76ers hosted the Bucks. Hubbarth tied Cox on Feb. 11 with a Celtics-Heat game alongside Redick, Ryan Ruocco and Richard Jefferson.

As February drew to a close, Craig Simpson had lined himself up for another leaderboard pass, but that bit of detail will have to wait until this series moves along to March.

Announcer Milestones from January 2024

It’s high time to do some accounting around here, in the form of spelling out the 15 announcer milestones that happened in January on the way to 192, and counting, in 2024. There are parts of the year where we can cover a lot of ground pretty quickly on that front: anything between about Father’s Day and Labor Day is, after all, the offseason in basketball, football and hockey. January is not one of those times, which is why I’m currently staring down the prospect of writing eight or nine more of these to finish the year. So let’s get started.

 
(By way of setting the ground rules, we have five main lists: NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL in the U.S. and NHL in Canada. There are also three other lists that exist only by combining those five: NHL totals, totals in the four American leagues, and totals in the five leagues across the board. Commentators are sorted into three groups – play-by-play, analysts and reporters – and each list has a total column as well. At the moment, these figures only count pro sports, not because I don't think college sports should count but because we had to draw the line somewhere because there are only so many hours to track this stuff. All data is taken from the 506 Sports Archive.)

The Nuggets-Warriors game on Thursday, Jan. 4 marked the 250th play-by-play appearance of Brian Anderson’s career, making him the 10th announcer to reach that point. The late game of the TNT doubleheader featured Anderson on the call with Stan Van Gundy and Allie LaForce.

One night later, Doris Burke worked her way out of another 10th-place spot on an NBA list, calling her 314th national game as an analyst to break the tie with Steve Kerr and move into ninth place outright. (Burke and Kerr had been tied since Christmas 2023.) The Knicks-76ers game that broke the tie included Mike Breen on play-by-play and Katie George courtside.

2024’s first edition of Hockey Night in Canada included an announcer milestone in the early window. Maple Leafs-Sharks marked Craig Simpson’s 1050th national NHL telecast to Canada: he was the second analyst to that mark, trailing only Harry Neale, and seventh person overall. Chris Cuthbert handled play-by-play for the game with Kyle Bukauskas reporting.

Another milestone later in the weekend was also sparked by HNIC, because Kelly Hrudey’s appearance on Rogers’ studio panel in Toronto pressed Greg Millen into service on the Flames-Blackhawks telecast on Sunday, Jan. 7, in Chicago. The matinee telecast (with Rick Ball on play-by-play and Ryan Leslie reporting) was Millen’s 900th national NHL telecast between the U.S. and Canada, becoming the seventh hockey analyst to reach that point and the eighth color person in any sport we track.

Two HNIC stalwarts moved up on the first weekend of the year, but another got passed, albeit on the gridiron. Fox’s Erin Andrews appeared on the sidelines of the Cowboys-Commanders season finale on Sunday, Jan. 7. That marked her 413th sideline appearance across our five main listings, which broke a tie with Elliotte Friedman for #13 on that list. Kevin Burkhardt, Greg Olsen and Tom Rinaldi rounded out the crew for America’s Game of the Week.

The third Hall of Famer taken in the 1984 NHL Entry Draft was, paradoxically, Tom Glavine, who would go on to win 305 games and win a World Series with the Braves of the 1990s. The third overall pick in that draft, Ed Olczyk, is one of three people to handle 900 American national NHL telecasts as the analyst after hitting the milestone on Wednesday, Jan. 10, with a Golden Knights-Avalanche contest alongside Kenny Albert and Brian Boucher.

The television history of soccer in the United States is less well-documented than some other sports, in part because it’s difficult to gauge exactly what constitutes a “major” competition (as opposed to something like the World Series, which was established 17 years before the first commercial radio broadcast). But the Premier League is undoubtedly the league with the highest combination of viewership and international prestige in the U.S. today, and we started counting their commentators when NBC took over American TV rights in 2013. On Sunday, Jan. 14, analyst Graeme le Saux became the second person in that span to appear on 400 telecasts when Manchester United hosted Tottenham Hotspur. Play-by-play man Jon Champion found out about this and informed le Saux on the air, which sparked a minute-long conversation about how everything has a statistic now. (Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how to post the video clip without running into an automated PL copyright censor.)

Back on the west side of the Atlantic, intrepid ESPN reporter Lisa Salters handled her 694th and 695th sideline reports in our listings in January. The 694th game, which tied Dave Hodge for the fourth-most reports in our five main listings, was a Texans-Colts game on Saturday, Jan. 6, while the 695th game that passed him was the Eagles-Buccaneers wild-card matchup five days later. Joe Buck and Troy Aikman staffed the booth for both games.

When Jon Champion brought up announcer counting on Jan. 14, he probably didn’t have an inkling that he was a week away from his own milestone, but he was. Sunday, Jan. 21, marked his 190th Premier League telecast back to the U.S. in the NBC era: 190 might not seem like an exceptionally round number, but it marks 5 complete seasons for a single PL club (or half of an entire season across the league). He again shared the gantry with le Saux for the Bournemouth-Liverpool clash.

Later that weekend, another NBC stalwart unseated an immortal in his field, albeit not in that immortal’s most recognizable record. Sunday Night Football play-by-play voice Mike Tirico’s 571st national play-by-play telecast across the four major U.S. pro sports broke a tie with Pat Summerall for #19 on the all-time list. Despite being played on a Sunday afternoon, Buccaneers-Lions still counted after Rams-Lions had been the tying telecast on Jan. 14. Cris Collinsworth analyzed both games with Melissa Stark on the sideline.

On Wednesday, Jan. 24, the milestone trackers went back inside. TNT hockey voice Brendan Burke called his 155th national NHL telecast on the American side, a Hurricanes-Bruins tilt with Jennifer Botterill and Boucher, to pass Pat Foley for 15th after tying him on Wild-Stars two weeks earlier. On the hardwood, ESPN mainstay Mike Breen called Suns-Mavericks that night with Doris Burke analyzing and Cassidy Hubbarth courtside: the game was Breen’s 1082nd in the four major U.S. pro sports, breaking a tie with Mike Emrick for the eighth-most on record. Breen had tied Emrick with a Mavericks-Lakers game on Jan. 17.

If Breen’s voice is synonymous with ESPN’s NBA coverage in 2024, his TNT counterpart is Kevin Harlan, who has a history in both kinds of inflatable leather balls thanks to also having decades of NFL experience. Those figures combined to push Harlan to his 1,392nd career national telecast on Thursday, Jan. 25, which passed Pierre McGuire for fifth-most across our five main listings. The tiebreaking game was a Celtics-Heat contest with Reggie Miller and Allie LaForce. (Yes, we realize the irony in a hockey announcer getting passed in a game involving the Heat.) The Grizzlies and Timberwolves played Harlan’s tying game on Jan. 18.

Not to be outdone, the Calgary Flames find themselves in the seemingly-contradictory position of merging fire and ice in the same sport, and they hosted a milestone game on Saturday, Jan. 27. The Chicago-Calgary tilt on the latter half of HNIC marked Scott Oake’s 1250th national NHL telecast, all as a reporter: he was the first reporter in any sport to reach that mark, and among all flavors of commentator he sat fifth on the NHL list and 10th in the five main listings. Ball and Millen helmed the booth at the Saddledome.

The final NFL milestone of the 2023-24 season came Sunday, Jan. 28, in the AFC championship between the Chiefs and Ravens. Tracy Wolfson, CBS’s lead sideline reporter, worked her 266th game across the four main U.S. pro sports to pass Tom Verducci for 13th on that list. (Verducci also has even more MLB telecasts under his belt as an analyst, but those don’t count toward his reporter total here.) Wolfson had tied Verducci a week earlier with the Chiefs-Ravens divisional game. Jim Nantz and Tony Romo called both games.

A pair of NHL milestones snuck in under the wire on the last day of January. Sportsnet reporter Shawn McKenzie passed Al Trautwig for the 17th-most reporter appearances on our five main lists (192) when he handled Senators-Red Wings with Harnarayan Singh and Garry Galley. Olczyk pushed his total to 904 total games, the 13th-most across all three commentator flavors in America, and passed Craig Sager when he called Kings-Predators with Albert and Boucher. (McKenzie had tied Trautwig on Canadiens-Penguins the previous weekend while Olczyk matched Sager on the Blackhawks-Kraken game Jan. 24.)

Four commentators (Simpson, Bukauskas, A.J. Mleczko and Dan Murphy) ended January in ties that we will cover when the series moves on to February.

Twenty-Five National Television Announcer Milestones From Aug. 23 to Sept. 22

Somewhere around Aug. 23, it looks like we quit updating the Twitter feed as new announcer milestones got reached. That happened for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the unprecedented month-long convergence of all four major pro sports plus MLS.

The record-keeping hasn't stopped, though, and now we present a 24-pack of announcer milestones that happened since then. Plus a bonus one at the end because there were actually 25.

(I really should knock the dust off this blog more often rather than trying to compress everything into 280 characters on Twitter...)

Totals updated through the close of the day on Sept. 20, 2020, and also include Monday Night Football on Sept. 21.

1. August 24: Ed Olczyk becomes the sixth person to call 750 American national telecasts of National Hockey League games.

2. August 24: Pierre McGuire calls his 1,300th national NHL telecast between the U.S. and Canada. He's the second person to reach that milestone, trailing Bob Cole. Widening the scope to all four major professional sports, Cole and McGuire are joined in the 1300 club by Marv Albert and Dick Stockton (with Jim Hughson approaching).

3. August 24: McGuire's 1300th game between the U.S. and Canada was also his 909th American national telecast. That tied him with Mike Breen for the 11th-most in our records. (McGuire passed Breen outright with Canucks-Golden Knights on Aug. 25, although "passed" is relative because Breen is very much still active,)

4. August 25: With the Canucks-Golden Knights game, Louie DeBrusk makes his 204th appearance as an NHL colour commentator on a Canadian network. That ties Mickey Redmond for 15th in our records. DeBrusk completes the pass with his 205th game, Avalanche-Stars, the next day.

5. August 26: The Lightning-Bruins game was Olczyk's 750th American national telecast of an NHL game as a color commentator. (The difference between this and no. 1 is that the former listing includes two games as a sideline reporter.)

6. August 26: With Lightning-Bruins, Mike Emrick calls his 1,074th game on our overall master list — all three flavors of announcer, all four major pro sports, including Canada. That ties Harry Neale for 12th on that list. Emrick completes the pass when the two teams meet on Aug. 29.

7. August 26: The Flyers' game against the Islanders is the 894th time that team has appeared on an American network, matching the Red Wings for the most by an NHL team. Philadelphia completes the pass three days later.

8. August 29: The NBC hockey analyst of the present ties NBC's baseball analyst of a generation ago. Ed Olczyk analyzes his 766th game (Lightning-Bruins), matching the number of MLB telecasts with which Tony Kubek is credited. That's tied for 10th-most on our list of analysts across the U.S. and Canada. Edzo completes the pass with Flyers-Islanders the next night. (This milestone counts games on both sides of the international border. There is about to be another, similar milestone counting only U.S. telecasts.)

9. August 30: Baseball breaks into a list that has thus far been a bunch of hockey. Ron Darling becomes the tenth man to call 250 national MLB telecasts as an analyst when he breaks down the Yankees and Mets on TBS.

10. August 30: The Avalanche-Stars game double-dips on the milestone tracker. Kenny Albert calls his 300th NHL telecast for the United States, becoming the 13th person overall and seventh play-by-play announcer to reach that milestone. The game is also his 1,138th on the overall master list (all three flavors of announcer, all four major pro sports, including Canada), tying Scott Oake of Hockey Night in Canada for 10th place. Albert completes the pass of Oake later that night with Golden Knights-Canucks.

11. August 30: Sunday Night Baseball hits the City of Brotherly Love and Matt Vasgersian calls his 300th national MLB telecast as the play-by-play man. He's the 14th man to reach that plateau.

12. September 5: John Forslund becomes the fifth man to handle play-by-play of 350 NHL telecasts for an American national audience when he calls Islanders-Flyers. He's the 14th person to get there if you include Canada, and the 11th person to get to 350 American NHL games in any flavor of commentary.

13. September 5: With no regard for human life, the Nuggets-Lakers game is the 1,200th appearance by Kevin Harlan on our American master list (all three flavors of announcer, all four major pro sports, but not including Canada). All of those appearances are as the play-by-play announcer, and he's the third person to reach that milestone, behind Dick Stockton and Marv Albert. If you expand to Canada, he's fifth, also trailing Bob Cole and Jim Hughson. If you expand to color/colour commentators and include Canada, Pierre McGuire also tops him (see no. 2).

14. September 7: Craig Simpson calls his 850th NHL telecast in Canada, all as the colour commentator. The game in question is Islanders-Lightning. He's the third colour man to 850, trailing Harry Neale and Dick Irvin, and the eighth to 850 in Canada overall.

15. September 9: Jeff Van Gundy analyzes his 700th NBA national telecast, becoming the sixth person to broadcast 700 NBA games and the first person not named Hubie Brown to do color on that many.

16. September 11: John Forslund ties Dave Randorf for 13th on the NHL play-by-play list combining the U.S. and Canada. His 353rd game, bringing him level, is Lightning-Islanders on the 11th. His 354th game, completing the pass, is Golden Knights-Stars the next night.

17. September 11: Reggie Miller ties Mike Fratello for the fifth-most appearances on national television as an NBA game analyst, working his 517th game when the Nuggets play the Clippers. With the break between series, it takes him a week to finish the pass, until the 18th, by which time the Nuggets are playing the Lakers. Fratello was also holding down the no. 10 spot on the NBA's overall leaderboard, which Reggie now holds as well.

18. September 13: With her first NFL game of the season, Cardinals-49ers at Levi's Stadium, Laura Okmin passes Al Trautwig for 18th place on our master American sideline reporter list (all four major pro sports). The appearance is Okmin's 191st and also allows her to tie Tom Verducci for no. 17; she passes Verducci with the Rams-Eagles game a week later.

19. September 13: The leading lady of Sunday Night Football, Michele Tafoya, makes her 492nd appearance on our American sideline reporter list (all four major pro sports). That ties Jim Gray for fourth-most, trailing Craig Sager, Ken Rosenthal and Lisa Salters. Tafoya passes Gray a week later with Patriots-Seahawks.

20: September 14: Lisa Salters ties Bonnie Bernstein for the seventh-most sideline appearances in NFL TV records with her 141st on the Titans-Broncos game. She finishes the pass with the second week of Monday Night Football on Sept. 21.

21. September 15: Brian Boucher ties Joe Micheletti for sixth place on the American NHL analyst list with his 267th game. He passes Micheletti two days later. Both games are Islanders-Lightning.

22. September 17: Combining totals between the U.S. and Canada, Ed Olczyk ties former Hockey Night in Canada lead man Bill Hewitt with his 780th national telecast. Olczyk equalizes with the final Islanders-Lightning game, then passes Hewitt for 16th outright on Sept. 19 ... speaking of which ...

23. September 19: The opener of the Stanley Cup Final is Mike Emrick's 1050th game as a play-by-play announcer on our master list (all four major pro sports including Canada), He's the ninth person to get there.

24. September 22: With Game 3 of the NBA Western Conference Final, Brian Anderson calls his 116th national NBA telecast. That ties Dan Shulman for 16th among play-by-play announcers.

25. September 22: Rick Sutcliffe, ESPN's most experienced MLB analyst, calls his 576th national telecast; John Madden also called 576 national NFL telecasts during a career that spanned all four major broadcast networks from 1979-2008. The two men are tied for 12th on the analyst leaderboard across all four major pro sports and will be until Sutcliffe works again. Sutcliffe's total is also fourth-most among MLB color guys, falling in a big gap between Tony Kubek (766) and John Smoltz (398).

Regular Twitter service will now resume.

The Week That Was: May 19, 2019

Welcome to The Week That Was, a new feature at Un/Necessary Sports Research that solves all of our problems a couple of our problems.

First of all, there's fresh content on the blog side of things.

Second of all, the cable and Internet went out in our bunker (well, our below-street-level apartment) on Monday night before Trusty Laptop 2.0 passed into the great beyond on Thursday evening. All of our announcer data is backed up in the cloud, so that was never in danger, but we haven't been able to access it and tweet nuggets in almost a week.

Third, when we do tweet nuggets, they don't really get archived. (TW)^2 can serve as a one-stop shop for all that went down in the world of esoteric sports ... discoveries over the previous half of a fortnight.

So, as they say over at the Hydraulic Press Channel, with Trusty Laptop 3.0 acquired, here we go.

Sunday, May 12

• Craig Simpson ties Greg Millen for #8 on the Canadian NHL commentators list with his 783rd game, the second game of the Hurricanes-Bruins series.
• Ed Olczyk works his 700th American NHL national telecast in the same game 2. (Two of these were as a sideline reporter, setting up something on Thursday.)

Monday, May 13

• Kenny Albert handles play-by-play for his 1,050th American national telecast across the four major sports. At this time of the year, he's doing hockey, specifically game 2 of the Blues-Sharks series.
• Pierre McGuire makes his 821st appearance on a U.S. national telecast of the four major pro sports, matching Curt Gowdy for 14th-most all-time.

Tuesday, May 14

• Simpson passes Millen for #8 on the Canadian NHL commentators list with his 784th game in game 3 of the series.
• Simpson matches Tim McCarver with his 804th appearance as a color man on the four major pro sports. Only six men have more.
• Game 3 is Mike Emrick's 1000th American national telecast as a play-by-play announcer, encompassing every major pro sport except the NBA. He's the sixth person to reach this milestone.

Wednesday, May 15

• McGuire worked his 822nd game, passing Gowdy after tying him on Monday.

Thursday, May 16

• Simpson finishes the pass he started on Tuesday, eclipsing McCarver for seventh on the list of color men across all four sports.
• Olczyk works his 700th American national NHL telecast as a color commentator, becoming the third person to accomplish that behind McGuire and Bill Clement.

Friday, May 17

• The Red Sox played the Astros in a game that still sends up the "interleague" flag in my brain. Bob Costas, who remembers when the Astros didn't exist in either league, calls his 445th national MLB telecast, tying Dizzy Dean for #11 in our database.
• Garry Galley calls his 473rd national NHL telecast in Canada, matching John Garrett for the eighth-most by a color analyst.

Saturday, May 18

• Jeff Van Gundy calls his 650th national NBA telecast, all of them as a color analyst. He's the third analyst to reach that mark, trailing Doug Collins and Hubie Brown, and the seventh person overall.

Sunday, May 19

• Galley passes Garrett with his 474th appearance after having been tied since Friday.

The Week Ahead...

Below is the national broadcast schedule for the four major pro sports; MLS, the U.S. national soccer team; and major professional golf and tennis tournaments. Asterisks denote "if necessary" games.

Monday, May 20
8:00 -- MLBN -- Phillies at Cubs
9:00 -- ESPN -- Warriors at Blazers, game 4

Tuesday, May 21
7:00 -- ESPN -- Phillies at Cubs
8:00 -- NBCSN, CBC, SN -- Sharks at Blues, game 6
8:30 -- TNT -- Bucks at Raptors, game 4
9:45 -- ESPN -- Braves at Giants

Wednesday, May 22
9:00 -- ESPN -- *Blazers at Warriors, game 5

Thursday, May 23
1:00 -- French Open singles draws.
We get excited over tournament brackets. We will not apologize for this.
8:30 -- TNT -- Raptors at Bucks, game 5
9:00 -- NBCSN, CBC, SN1 -- Blues at Sharks, game 7

Friday, May 24
7:00 -- UniMas, UDN, Twitter -- Orlando City vs. Galaxy
9:00 -- ESPN -- *Warriors at Blazers, game 6
9:00 -- UniMas, UDN, Twitter -- Real Salt Lake vs. Atlanta United

Saturday, May 25
3:30 -- Univision, UDN, Twitter -- Fire vs. NYCFC
4:00 -- FS1 -- Diamondbacks at Giants
7:15 -- Fox regional -- Red Sox at Astros
7:15 -- Fox regional -- Dodgers at Pirates
7:15 -- Fox regional -- Braves at Cardinals
8:30 -- TNT -- *Bucks at Raptors, game 6

Sunday, May 26
5:00 a.m. -- Tennis Channel -- French Open, first round
12:00 -- ESPN -- USWNT vs. Mexico at Harrison, N.J.
12:00 -- NBC -- Indianapolis 500
Green flag at 12:45 after "Back Home Again in Indiana" at 12:36.
6:00 -- FS1 -- Sounders vs. Sporting Kansas City
7:00 -- ESPN or ESPN2 -- Braves at Cardinals
9:00 -- ESPN -- *Blazers at Warriors, game 7

Three HNIC Analysts Simultaneously Call Milestone Games

This round of announcer database updates involves a lot of hockey, because most of the announcer database updates I make between January and April involve hockey. So we start this post with arguably the two most iconic songs in televised hockey, one for each side of the 49th parallel.




(Standard disclaimer: These announcer totals come from the lists maintained at The 506 Forums (free registration required to view); in this post, we're working with data posted by Tim Brulia. And as always, you can see the top 16 in each category on our TV databases page.)

North of the border, CBC has not only showed more network hockey than any of its competition, but it has still aired more than half of the 9,190 games in the database. In the U.S., the network currently known as NBCSN has that lead, but Disney still comes out ahead thanks to more than 1,100 games on each of ESPN and ESPN2.

A trio of Sportsnet analysts reached career milestones last Saturday. Working Maple Leafs-Red Wings in CBC's last telecast from Joe Louis Arena, Craig Simpson became the fourth color man to work 650 network games; he trails only Dick Irvin, Harry Neale and Greg Millen.

In Tampa, Garry Galley handled color for the 350th time, becoming the 10th analyst to reach that milestone and 24th commentator across all three tracked positions.

Millen, meanwhile, was in Winnipeg handling the Senators-Jets tilt alongside R.J. Broadhead. That was Millen's 711th appearance, all on color. Seven hundred eleven is not at all a round number; it's really rather straight. Why, you ask, is this important?

Brian McFarlane is the author of more than 90 books about hockey and the honorary president of the Society for International Hockey Research. He's sort of a big deal. Over a 27-year career from 1964-91, McFarlane covered 710 games on Hockey Night in Canada (and got banned from one NHL press box in the process). Millen's 711th game moved him past McFarlane into ninth place on the all-time Canadian list.

And since I assume I'm not the only person whose mind went off on this tangent, there appear to be three 7-Elevens in Winnipeg.

Slightly farther down the list of color commentators, Pierre McGuire appeared on Canadian national television for the 517th time on Feb. 25 when Sportsnet picked up the NBC broadcast of the Flyers-Penguins Stadium Series game at Heinz Field. That slid him past Glenn Healy for the fifth-most color appearances on Canadian networks.

Finally, Jim Hughson continues his ascent up the leaderboard; with his 1,074th game on Feb. 11, he passed Harry Neale for the third-most appearances in any capacity.

---

With that lame 49th-parallel allusion behind us, we can move ahead to the American commentator listings. At some level, these are easier, with an eight-man Mount Rushmore (Gary Thorne and Bill Clement; Mike Emrick, Ed Olczyk and McGuire; Dave Strader, Brian Engblom and Darren Pang) that's head and shoulders above the field: a gap of almost 250 appearances separates eighth-place Olczyk and ninth-place Dan Kelly.

(If obvious wordplay about natural landmarks bothers you ... this is the wrong blog.)

A native of Wabash County, Indiana, Emrick is the dean of American NHL play-by-play men, at least at the national level, with a career that started in 1973 in Port Huron, Michigan. His first national work on the NHL came on March 29, 1987, a Bruins-Blackhawks tilt from Chicago Stadium.

Almost 30 years later, Emrick needs 94 more games to match his inaugural partner, Bill Clement, for the most network telecasts in U.S. TV history. Only Marv Albert and Hubie Brown have more in a single sport; more on that to come later. Emrick's 900th game was the Blackhawks-Wild game on Feb. 8; he ends play April 5 with 907 telecasts, and as NBC's lead voice will probably pick up 20 or so more during the playoffs.

Thanks to a pair of rinkside-reporter gigs for ESPN in 2002 and 2003, Olczyk's overall total runs two games ahead of his analyst figure; his 600th network game was Feb. 12 (Red Wings-Wild), 10 days before his 600th analyst appearance on Feb. 22.

McGuire, unburdened by a team contract, has widened his lead over Olczyk by 16 games this year; he'll call his 50th game of 2016-17 with the season-ending Capitals-Bruins tilt on Sunday. McGuire took the sixth overall spot from Pang on March 29, the 30th anniversary of Emrick's ESPN debut.

Sunday, April 2 marked the point at which one-third of American network NHL telecasts have come under the NBC/OLN/Versus deals inked after the lockout. This does not include 158 regular-season games on HDNet (now AXS TV) from 2005-08.

The cable end of that contract (NBC, I mean) celebrated a pair of milestones this spring as well. A pair of regional telecasts on the final day of February were the 1499th and 1500th NHL games on that channel under three different names, with a Hurricanes-Islanders game on March 13 marking the point at which NBCSN has aired one-fourth of all NHL telecasts in the log.

On March 12, the NBC Sports Group and Comcast aired their 2000th NHL game, a Wild-Blackhawks matchup from Chicago. For purposes of this calculation, games on USA since 2015 count, as do all games on NBC and NBCSN from those networks' inception; however, USA's run as the league's cable partner from 1979-85 does not count since it was not in either conglomerate's portfolio at that point.

Finally, the Feb. 6 Blues-Flyers game was the 6,000th game in the American log.

The NHL playoffs begin next week, with somewhere between 60 and 105 games all set for national telecasts on both sides of the border.

Later this week, we'll take a look at milestones in the NBA and Major League Baseball. For NFL reading, Jeff Haggar's history of #1 analyst demotions from 2013 at Classic TV Sports seems ... shall we say ... topical.