Hockey Broadcaster Mike ‘Doc’ Emrick Retires
When the N.H.L. begins its next season, absent for the first time in four decades will be the man perhaps more associated with the league than any player, coach or official: the broadcaster Mike Emrick — known universally by his nickname, Doc.
Emrick, 74, who this year called the Stanley Cup finals for the 22nd time, announced his retirement on Monday. “In your mid-70s, you realize that you have had a very healthy and long run, except for the cancer scare, and you are looking outside and seeing this to be the autumn of your years,” he said on a conference call with reporters on Monday. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1991.
Emrick ascended to the top of his profession, jockeying with Canadian-born greats like Bob Cole and Dan Kelly in the pantheon of hockey’s play-by-play announcers. He worked in print media covering the Pittsburgh Penguins, earned his doctorate in broadcast communications from Bowling Green State University (hence the “Doc” sobriquet) and transitioned to television from radio in a way that was at once seamless and iconic.
“He was able to get away with a descriptive, radiolike, wood-to-wood calls, on network television,” said David J. Halberstam, the founder of the Sports Broadcast Journal and a former play-by-play announcer for the Miami Heat. “The textbook says, ‘Caption, don’t describe.’ Vin Scully said: ‘On radio you’re a puncher, and on television you’re a counterpuncher.’
