When the Rangers and Kings take the ice for Game 2 of the Stanley Cup final at Staples Center, Mike “Doc” Emrick will take his familiar place in the broadcast booth.
Emrick, missed Wednesday’s Game 1 because of a death in his family, is the voice of hockey, having spent his career making every game sound like a Game 7.
As the action darts back and forth in a blur, occupying your eyes, Emrick slows it down and clears up any confusion, grabbing your ears — unless you’re lucky enough to be in the arena.
In preparing to call his 12th Stanley Cup final, the veteran NBC broadcaster sounds like he always does — uncontrollably excited.
“I’m just thankful I get picked to do games and I get to be in dramatic situations because it is fun,” Emrick told The Post. “Some nights, you don’t sleep as well as others because you’re keyed up and you’re excited about the opportunity you have. You’re sort of in awe of it.”
He said he feels lucky to be part of the game, not realizing how lucky the game is to have him. After all these years, the best in the business still looks at it as a game and not a business.
He screams like a fan screams, often when fans scream, his passionate crescendos serving as the perfect sound track for both the euphoric and the stunned. The big moments just seem bigger, the highs only heightened.
Even as a broadcaster fans embrace rather than endure, Emrick often will reiterate he is just a guide, not an attraction. The game is about the players. He is a scene-enhancer, not a scene-stealer.
A passion difficult to process is what reels you in, but an overloaded arsenal of anecdotes and adjectives keeps it all fresh.
Sure, pucks are passed, but according to Emrick, they’re also shoveled, fiddled, thrown, punched, paddled, careened, directed, wanded and muscled.
“It wasn’t something I really sought to do, it was just the way I saw different action on the ice, translated different ways to me,” said Emrick, who broadcast Devils games until 2011. “When I was in graduate school, I would go the minor league games in Dayton, [Ohio]. Their announcer said if you can find different ways to say the same action — because in hockey we have many things that happen the same way over and over again — if you say the same action the same way it’ll drive people nuts.
“I read a lot and my fifth-grade teacher always said if you read and you use a word five times, that word becomes yours. She encouraged us to read and expand our vocabularies … you don’t want to ever talk down to people, but I found it’s a way to amuse myself and maybe others if I use different words like that. I don’t come in with specific ones I want to use, though, because that would be too time-consuming.”
The championship series brings minor changes to his calls, mostly in providing extra background information and context for casual fans who tune in for the later rounds, but the language is a constant.
As much as he enjoys the hours of preparation before each game, so much of what he says only works in spontaneity.
However, you can be prepared. Here is a list of some of Doc’s most frequent phrases you can expect to hear during the final round:
Firewagon-line change: the chaotic shifts of players skating to the bench, while others rush and jump onto the ice
Waffleboarded: a save a goaltender makes using his blocker, referring to the nickname of old-style blockers, which looked like waffles
Shuffleboarded: to push the puck with only one hand on the stick
Freight-trained: when one player checks another with massive impact
Sashays: when a player confidently and casually skates past a defender
Soccered: to kick the puck
Feathered: to pass softly
Jostled: pushing or hitting players in a crowded area on the ice
Fired/Rifled/Blasted: hitting the puck extremely hard in any direction
Pitchforked: an attempt to clear the puck from one’s zone by firing the puck into the air
SCAAAAAAWR: Emrick’s signature call, letting you know the puck has crossed the line into the net
Ping-ponged/pinballed: when the puck frenetically bounces around the ice, often off the boards
Paraphernalia: a goaltender’s equipment
Elevatored: when the puck is lifted into the air, over a defenseman or towards the net
Knifed: when a player splits multiple defensemen, either with a deke or a pass
Filter/slide/rattle/ricochet/skip/poke/flip/drag/steer/direct/lead/pitch/bang/force/brush/squib/hand: to pass