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Nobody does it better than Doc!! |
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Yet again
Mike "Doc" Emrick showed tonight why he is the best play by play broadcaster in hockey during Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Eastern Conference Finals at MSG between the Rangers and Devils! When New Jersey's
Travis Zajac got a penalty and the door to the Devils' penalty box wouldn't open, Doc did a great several minute "play-by-play" call on that too including being able to name off the top of his head the members of the MSG arena crew who were fixing it (and even how long they had worked there) and then dropping in an appropriate
Bob Villa ("This Old House") reference as well.
Doc also mentioned that in the old days in the minors many rinks had just a single "community" penalty box used by both teams. That comment reminded me of an incident I had witnessed
36 years ago at the old
Hershey Park Arena during the
1975-76 season when then AHL tough guys
Giles Lupien of the
Nova Scotia Voyageurs, a 6'6" blueliner who later played for the
Montreal Canadiens and is now a successful player agent, and hard nosed winger
Andre Deschamps, a then
Buffalo Sabres' "farmhand", of the
Hershey Bears shared HPA's cozy single box after a tussle being "separated" in there only by
Randy Waybright who was not the biggest of off ice officials. Poor Randy, a super nice guy if ever there was one, seemed to age about five years in those five minutes he shared that confined space with those two still steaming combatants!!!
The Combatants
Unfortunately, as I recall, Deschmpes' career was ended a year later on the day his contract with Buffalo expired (he never made it to Sabres) when he was sitting in a bar in his native Quebec and was hit in the knee by a stray bullet fired by a Separatist.
I've known and worked with Doc for 35 years now since he joined the AHL
Maine Mariners in 1977 from the IHL
Port Huron Flags and he
still amazes me!! There is just nobody better no matter what happens at the pond on any given night.
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