The Happy Recap: In Which We Hyperventilate About a World Without Doc Emrick

The Happy Recap, a phrase we stole from legendary Mets announcer Bob Murphy, is now a new daily (!) feature at Puck the Media, where we recap our day, and talk about a subject that we enjoy talking about.  This one’s for us, but we hope you’ll enjoy it too.

We love Doc Emrick, yada yada yada, childhood memories.  Anyway, we found a pretty revealing interview with the doctor in, of all places, a small Indiana newspaper.  As many know, Doc grew up in Indiana.  Here’s what he told them, on his future:

“I still enjoy it and I have an understanding wife who allows me to keep doing it,” Emrick said on his cell phone as he was driving to the minor league game. “I’m going to keep going year-to-year. My contract (with Versus and MSG) runs out in two years, and then I’ll see how I feel about it.”

That’s right, Doc’s contract is up at the end of the 2009-10 season (and what we will soon dub The Greatest.  Hockey.  Year.  Ever.  But that’s later on).  That’s kinda’ scary to a lifelong Devils fan, and just a hockey fan in general.  We’re sure Doc won’t want to give it up that soon, but it does make us think.  Who would replace Doc at this point?  There really isn’t anyone waiting in the wings that really stands out.  So we ask you, the reader: Who’s ready to be the NHL’s #1 play-by-play man?  We’re interested to hear what you have to think.  Let us know, we’ll post some responses tomorrow.  Our simple name suggestions are below.  That, plus the day in “Puck the Media”, are after the jump.

Tomorrow Night’s Liveblog is Cancelled

Unfortunately, we will be unable to liveblog tomorrow night’s Flyers-Lightning game, due to personal reasons.  We apologize for anyone who was planning to join us.  Our next liveblog will instead be a week from Tuesday, with the Isles-Flyers facing off on Dec. 9.  Thank you for understanding

By the way, announcers for Versus this week:

Colorado vs. Minnesota, Tonight, 8PM – Joe Beninati, Andy Brickley, Bob Harwood

Tampa Bay vs. Philadelphia, Tomorrow Night, 7PM – Mike Emrick, Eddie Olczyk, Chris Simpson

The NHL Tournament of Announcers: Round 1, Match 10, Dan Kelly Bracket: Mike Haynes vs. Bob Cole

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, this took a while to re-start, but let’s keep on keepin’ on.  First things first, we have another upset, and another #1 seed goes down.  Jack Edwards beats Chris Cuthbert.  Somehow, we suspect Cornelius Hardenbergh and his gang of knuckleheads had something to do with it.

Anyway, it’s Avs play-by-play man Mike Haynes taking on Hall of Famer and CBC legend Bob Cole.  Voting for 24 hours, is open.  Enjoy!

The NHL Markets to Toys ‘R’ Us Kids at Christmastime

The NHL has notched two new holes in it’s “Good Ideas” belt just this morning.  First came that ridiculously awesome Winter Classic promo.  Now, we have the news that the league is getting some prime real estate to market it’s products during the holiday season.  In this story from Tripp Mickle of Sports Business Journal (reg. may be required), it looks like hockey will invade the Toys ‘R’ Us in Times Square:

The 800-square-foot NHL Feature Shop, as the league is calling the display, will feature NHL licensed merchandise such as hockey equipment from Franklin, pucks and pennants from WinCraft, trading cards from Upper Deck and headwear from Twins.

Other leagues such as Major League Baseball and the NFL have installed similar displays at the start of their respective seasons, but the NHL is the first to put one up during the holidays.

“We’re excited about it because it’s prime real estate in New York during the holiday season,” said Brian Jennings, NHL executive vice president of marketing. “We’re certainly cognizant of the crosscurrents of the retail climate out there, but our business right now continues to trend upwards in the video game space and trading card space, so we’re encouraged and feel it’s our time to grab more market share.”

The league will use the space as a way to drive traffic to the NHL Store on 47th and 6th, using some kind of collector pin set.  We’re not sure how that’s going to go, but we like everything else about this.  It’s not quite FAO Schwartz big, but it’s a real great place to advertise the game to a new generation of fans.  Though we felt, in the end, “I don’t wanna grow up, I just wanna be Patrick Kane” would’ve been a better brand name.

Former NHL Announcer Jiggs McDonald Finally Coming Home From Thailand

This was going to be our area to comment on Jiggs McDonald and his wife, along with 1,000 other Canadian tourists, being stuck in Thailand due to political unrest.  But, lo and behold, Alanah from Canucks and Beyond – who has been all over this story – sent us an update earlier today: 

Jiggs and his wife are part of a small group that are heading home today, as the Canadian embassy managed to secure them a way out.

While it’s certainly great that McDonald and his wife are able to get out of an awful situation, this means that there are still hundreds more who are stuck in Thailand.  McDonald sent the following note to Canadian and American journalists yesterday:

Hey, Whaddaya’ Know, Mike Mottau Wasn’t Laughing

Hey, we haven’t really followed up on anything in a while.  But we posted this story a while back in which we took an angry wag-of-the-finger stance to some irresponsible anger that Newsday Islanders beat writer Greg Logan took out on Mike Mottau (in the last 5 seconds of the video above), in which he stated the following:

Unfortunately, the message didn’t take. TV cameras caught Mottau laughing about the play in the penalty box. It must have been the guilty enjoyment of a man who knew he got away with one. It certainly wasn’t the sense of deep remorse Weight expressed immediately on the ice after he ran into Sutter.

We proceeded to get angry at this, but you can read the post yourself.  Anyway, our hero Tom Gulitti has fired back by ACTUALLY TALKING TO MOTTAU!  Can you believe something like that would resolve a situation such as this?  Mottau had the following to say:

Will Barack Obama Say “Yes We Can” to the Winter Classic?

Some titles are too easy.  Anyway, doesn’t our President Elect look rather bad-ass in that photograph?  His face is all “check this out, I got me a Wings jersey.  Tell Palin’s hockey moms to go bag skate for the day.”  Obama may have to leave is Red Wings jersey in the closet (where were sure it holds a prominent place) for January 1, 2009.  Why?  Because Blackhawks President/Ambassador to Anyone Who’ll Listen John McDounough is attempting to get Senator Obama to attend to the Winter Classic game, according to Ken Campbell’s cover story in this week’s THN (Subscription Req. to view Digital Version):

 

Among those the Hawks hope will take in the game is Chicagoan Barack Obama, who at that time will be 19 days away from being inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States.  Obama is an avowed White Sox fan and even though McDounough worked for the Cubs, he’s working on some of the people in Obama’s camp.

As far as I’m aware, William Jefferson Clinton was the first sitting President to take in a hockey game, though I cannot find any proof of it happening.  We know the Red Wings and all past champions have been to the White House, but this would certainly be the greatest connection ever between a President and a hockey game, which begs the question, how big could the Winter Classic become for the sport and the league, just by the image of Obama attending, even dropping a ceremonial faceoff?