from Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports,
Mark Gross, ESPN’s senior vice president of production and remote events, will lead all aspects of NHL coverage. He gave Front Office Sports a preview of ESPN’s strategy:
- ESPN may hire an uber news-breaker for the NHL similar to Adam Schefter (NFL), Adrian Wojnarowski (NBA), or Jeff Passan (MLB).
- Look for talent mainstays like Steve Levy, Linda Cohn, John Buccigross, and Barry Melrose to play key roles in the coverage.
- Yes, the popular ’90s-era NHL theme music will be back (but a redux of Fox’s “glowing puck” is not in the cards).
- A new NHL studio show on ESPN’s linear TV channels and an expansion of Cohn’s “In the Crease” on ESPN+.
- Will ESPN’s on-air talent talk about gambling? Don’t bet against it, Gross says.
A Q & A with Mark Gross by Michael McCarthy can be read here and here is a snipet...
FOS: Tell us your coverage approach. How many teams of announcers will you use to call games?
Gross: We’re actually in the process of figuring it out. Right now, we have a list going, because we’ve heard from so many people that it’s overwhelming. We have a list of play-by-play announcers who are interested, analysts, hosts, reporters and production people. We’re just in the process of playing around with it.
Obviously, we know the number of games. We’re still trying to confirm the days of the week of the games. We’re not quite there as far as announce teams. Needless to say there will be at least two to three [announce teams] going during the course of the regular season. That will likely increase during the playoffs.