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MY FRIEND MIKE "DOC" EMRICK ENTERS THE HOCKEY HALL OF FAME

June 7, 2008, 8:57 AM ET [ Comments]
Scoop Cooper
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When Mike "Doc" Emrick, the premier voice of hockey in the United States, ends each season by calling the U.S. national telecast of the Stanley Cup championship game, one thing you will always expect to hear "Doc" reciting are those memorable words penned by the late Steve Summers, for many years the hockeywriter for the Harrisburg (PA) Patriot-News, describing the perfect 12-0 sweep of the AHL Hershey Bears to the 1988 Calder Cup championship. As he has done so appropriately on previous such occasions, "Doc" intoned this wonderful line once again when the Detroit Red Wings won their eleventh career Cup title by defeating the Pittsburgh Penguins to end the NHL's 2007-08 season. And he will no doubt do so again next year.

To "Doc" it is a Hall of Fame line. And so now is the man who calls it every Spring as it has just recently been announced that "Doc" is to be be honored by our game's top shrine next November when he is presented the 2008 Foster Hewitt Award and his name is permanently inscribed on the wall of the Great Hall as a distinguished "Honoree" of the Hockey Hall of Fame.



Nobody could deserve this honor more.



"The Good Doctor"


For more than three-and-a-half decades now "Doc" has been calling thousands of those "fleeting moments" in our game that go on to last "so many years in memory" having first done so while earning his Ph.D. at Bowling Green University and calling the games of that school's hockey team in the early 1970's. It was something that he had first dreamed of doing while growing up not in a hockey hotbed like Minnesota or Massachusetts, but in the small rural central Indiana town of LaFountain (population 900). He could, of course, have gone on to a distinguished career in academia with his Doctorate in Communications, but the lure of the "pond" was overwhelming and so that is the path he chose to pursue.

"I was 26 when I first got a real chance to do this," he recently told John Niyo of The Detroit News. "I had sent tapes around to every minor league team that existed, and even a few NHL teams -- like they were going to take me with no experience -- and I saved a lot of the rejection letters. There's now some famous signatures on them, too. I know John Muckler signed one from the New Haven Nighthawks, but there are many others, guys who are either Hall of Famers or somehow or another made their mark in hockey. So I'd gotten all those "no, thank you" letters back and when I was finishing my doctorate at Bowling Green, what I thought I'd be doing for a living was teaching in college. But then a station in Port Huron (MI) called and said I could be the sports director and also broadcast the IHL team's (Pt. Huron Flags) games there. That sounded good to me. So for $180 a week and an 80-hour work week, it was exactly what I wanted."

After four years in Pt. Huron (where he still makes his home), Emrick got his big break as both he and the Flags' coach Bob McCammon were hired by the Philadelphia Flyers to join their new AHL team in Portland, Maine -- the Maine Mariners -- in 1977. This is when I met "Doc" for the first time. We have been fast friends ever since and have worked together many times in radio and TV booths from coast to coast. The first year Mariners went on to win the Calder Cup in 1977-78 with such players on its roster as now long time NHL coach Terry Murray, future Vezina Trophy winner Pete Peeters, and a fourth line right winger named Brian Burke who was playing his only season as a pro before moving on to Harvard Law School and his career in hockey management. The next year the Mariners won the Calder Cup again giving Doc the second of a string of championships which have included three Stanley Cups while calling the New Jersey Devils. He has also called games for the Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers during his career in addition to the Devils with which he will be entering his 17th season next Fall in addition to his many network duties over the years with NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, ESPN, OLN, VS, and others,

Although he has never worked for the Hershey Bears as a broadcaster, he has a special place in his heart for that great minor league franchise and even lived in Hershey for a number of seasons while calling both the Flyers and Devils. A close friend of the late Frank Mathers, the longtime player, coach, GM, and President of the club between 1956 and 1991, he presided at Mathers' emotional retirement ceremony at the venerable Hersheypark Arena in 1991 as well as the ceremonies for the last regular season Bears' game there (where they had played since 1936) in 2002 and the moving pre-game memorial ceremonies for Mathers at the GIANT Center in 2005.


"Doc" and I visit with Frank Mathers at Hersheypark Arena in April, 2002.


Perhaps what has bonded "Doc" and myself as such close friends it our joint passion for the history of the game, and he has had the honor of describing a great deal of it in person over the past three plus decades including:

Game 7, 1987 Stanley Cup Finals, Flyers vs Oilers. The Oilers win their third Cup in four years. (ESPN)
1988 NHL All-Star Game. Mario Lemieux caps a three-goal, six-point night with an overtime goal. (ESPN)
Game 4, 1988 Stanley Cup Finals, Oilers vs Bruins. A power outage at Boston Garden during the second period causes the game to be suspended and re-played in Edmonton two nights later, where the Oilers prevailed to win their fourth Cup in five years. (ESPN)
1992 Winter Olympics Gold Medal Game. The Unified Team defeats Canada 3–1 to win the gold medal. (CBS)
1994 Winter Olympics Gold Medal Game. Peter Forsberg scores his legendary penalty shot goal to give the Swedes the Gold. (CBS)
Game 6, 1994 Eastern Conference Finals, Rangers vs. Devils. Mark Messier publicly guarantees a victory, then scores a hat-trick. (SportsChannel New York)
Game 4, 1995 Stanley Cup Finals, Red Wings vs. Devils. Devils win first Championship. (FOX)
Game 3, 1996 World Cup Final, USA vs Canada. The USA rallies from a third-period deficit to beat Canada 5–2 and win the inaugural World Cup of Hockey. (FX)
1997 NHL All-Star Game. Owen Nolan calls his shot on a breakaway for a hat trick in San Jose. (FOX)
Game 1, 1997 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, Canadiens vs. Devils. Martin Brodeur scores a goal. (SportsChannel New York)
Game 4, 1998 Western Conference Finals, Stars vs. Red Wings. Vladimir Konstantinov returns to the Joe Louis Arena. (FOX)
April 18, 1999. Wayne Gretzky's final NHL game The Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the New York Rangers, 2–1, at MSG. (FOX)
Game 2, 2004 Western Conference Semifinals, Avalanche vs. Sharks. Jonathan Cheechoo scores between his legs. (ABC)
2006 Winter Olympics Gold Medal Game. Sweden defeats Finland for the Gold in Torino, Italy. (NBC)
Game 7, 2006 Stanley Cup Finals, Oilers vs. Hurricanes. Hurricanes win their first Championship. (NBC)
Game 5, 2007 Stanley Cup Finals, Senators vs. Ducks. Ducks win their first Championship. (NBC)
January 1, 2008. The AMP Energy NHL Winter Classic, the league's first outdoor game in the United States, in which the Pittsburgh Penguins defeat the Buffalo Sabres 2–1 in a shootout in front of a league-record crowd of 71,127 at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo. (NBC)
June 2, 2008, Game 5 Stanley Cup Finals, Penguins at Red Wings. Maxime Talbot postpones Detroit's Stanley Cup celebration, stunning the Wings with the tying goal in the final minute and Petr Sykora scores in the third overtime to force a sixth game. (NBC)

"Mike has been the pre-eminent hockey play-by-play broadcaster in the United States for many years,” said Chuck Kaiton, President, NHL Broadcasters’ Association and fellow Hewitt award winner. “His dedication to hockey and his enthusiasm for broadcasting make him worthy of this honor.”

I couldn't agree more.

Congratulations to my best friend in hockey for joining the likes of such other esteemed voices of our game as Danny Gallivan, Dick Irvin Jr., Gene Hart, Jim Robson, Budd Lynch, Dan Kelly, Jiggs McDonald, Bob Miller, and of course Foster Hewitt in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Truly, nobody "does it better."

(Your own thoughts and memories about "Doc"
are welcome in this blog's comment thread.)




And as a little side note: In honor of his election to the Hall of Fame, NBC helped make a lifelong dream of "Doc's" come true on June 3rd by holding the production meeting for their Game 5 Stanley Cup finals telecast in Pittsburgh the next night at PNC Park before the Pittsburgh Pirates game with the Houston Astros. A lifelong (and also often long suffering) Pirates fan, NBC had arranged a surprise to Emrick....to throw out the first pitch for the game!

"When it comes to the Pirates, I'm still a little boy I guess," the surprised -- and delighted -- Emrick noted. "This was really the highlight of my year!" (Unfortunately the Pirates lost the game however.)




PITTSBURGH: In honor of his election to the Hockey Hall of Fame as a broadcaster, Mike "Doc" Emrick throws out the ceremonial first pitch prior to the game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Houston Astros on June 3, 2008 at the PNC Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
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