Mike Emrick — known to countless sports fans as “Doc” thanks to his Ph.D — is retiring from calling NHL games at the age of 74.
“I hope I can handle retirement OK,” he told the New York Post, which broke the news Monday morning, “especially since I’ve never done it before. But I’ve just been extremely lucky for 50 years. And NBC has been so good to me, especially since the pandemic, when I was allowed to work from home in a studio NBC created.”
It’s wonderful for Emrick, who’s been in sports media since the 1970s, but a bummer for NHL fans everywhere who have heard his voice on national games both in the regular season and the playoffs — he’s called 22 Stanley Cup Finals!!
Emrick is known for his humongous lexicon of vocabulary used to describe the action on the ice — we’ll get to that in a minute — but it’s that voice that I think is just as amazing, as if he was born to do this very job from the start. When there was a scrum around the net or an amazing save, it went to the stratosphere, over the screams from the crowd. And then there was another octave beyond that for truly wild moments:
And yes, now we have to get to all those words he used to describe passes, puck movement and stick-handling. Blogs were fond of counting them, and with good reason. It’s incredible that he had those at his fingertips in a sport where the action is mostly continuous and furious.
This is a phenomenal chart of words Emrick used today to describe puck movement. http://t.co/0gRCw63CmN
— Richard Sandomir (@RichSandomir) February 21, 2014
Here’s his final summary of the 2019-20 season, one that was like no other:
It was a journey no hockey fan will ever forget.
Doc Emrick sums up the emotions of the past few months as we watched the greatest trophy in sports be awarded in spectacular fashion.
Thank you, hockey fans. We will see you again SOON. pic.twitter.com/Myjr9610rQ
— NHL on NBC (@NHLonNBCSports) September 29, 2020
All the best to a broadcasting legend.
