Wasted Effort

I watched and partially listened to the Blackhawks vs. Blues hockey game last night. Partially listened because it was “Woman’s Day” so the NHL/NBC woke folks thought it would be a great idea to have an all-female crew announce the game. Mind you, Kathryn Tappen has been a studio announcer on NHL Tonight for some time and she is great. She is knowledgeable about the game and a very smooth moderator, even when confronted with the off-color comments from the likes of Jeremy Roenick. I’m not at all against female announcers in general. I am when they don’t have the experience enough to be broadcasters.

The opening introductions were ok. They established their bonafides with how they are attached to this greatest of all games. Olympic and national team experience suggests they know the game. Got it. Where they lost me was instead of calling the play-by-play, they kept giving background and human-interest stories ignoring the game on the ice. It was obvious to me that they had done a lot of research to prepare for the game and they weren’t going to waste one ounce of that research. I switched the audio over to the Chicago broadcast on radio after the first period.

Some of the women used may have a place in broadcasting and perhaps with more experience, will find themselves in the stratospheric expertise of a Doc Emrick or Eddy Olcyzk, but they lost a chance to put their names in the hat last night.