Jim Fox Shines in Rare Circumstances
March 8, 2010 2 Comments
A couple of surprises awaited me when I turned on the Montreal-Los Angeles game on Center Ice on Saturday. First, the fact that it was not the Hockey Night in Canada telecast. Why the folks at inDemand are unable to get this done is beyond me. As much as I love hearing Bob Miller call a game, the fact is, I prefer the Canuck-y pageantry of Hockey Night any day… er, night.
Anyway, the second surprise was that I was not about to watch Bob Miller call a hockey game. Why? Well, the Hockey Hall of Famer has a case of shingles according to the LA Times:
Broadcaster Bob Miller, who is in his 37th season as the voice of the Kings, will miss at least three games while he recovers from shingles, a painful rash on the body that is caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox.
Miller, 71, missed the Kings’ game against Montreal on Saturday, only the 18th broadcast he had missed and the first since Nov. 2, 2002.
He will miss Monday’s home game against Columbus and won’t travel with the team for its game Wednesday at Chicago.
Radio play-by-play announcer Nick Nickson will join analyst Jim Fox in the TV booth for the games Monday and Wednesday, both on FS West.
However, this was not the case on Saturday. Fox was forced into emergency play-by-play duty and, I have to say, he was absolutely capable. For a man who’s never done it – as far as I’m aware – Fox kept up with the play fairly well. He got caught behind a few times, and wasted a little too much time calling it like a game on the radio, but who can criticize the desire to give as much detail as possible? Cheers to Jim Fox on a job well done, and get well Bob Miller.
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I’m pretty sure that HNIC telecasts are exclusive to NHL Network in the USA… with the late doubleheader game airing in the wee hours on delay.
No this is not the case. Almost every Saturday this season the second game has been included in the NHLCI package.
The first week of the season NHL Network showed both games on Saturday night and they did the same thing on Hockey Day in Canada but other than that the second game has been shown live on NHLCI and then REPEATED on Sunday afternoon on the NHL Network.
Who knows what happened this week. I didn’t bother to email or call DirecTV becasue their “customer service” people never have answers to questions like this.