It’s as plain and simple as this: Mike “Doc” Emrick remains a national treasure, as special as special gets.
Saturday morning’s U.S.-Russia Olympic hockey game didn’t need much outside help. It could stand by itself as a keeper. Yet on NBC, Emrick, with his easy elegance and embracing touch, still provided a perfect topping to the Americans’ extended shootout win:
“So many paid their rubles to see the home team win. But not this game. Not tonight.”
Now, if you didn’t get it, it still worked. But if you got it, Emrick likely gave you the chills. Those few words — “Not this game. Not tonight” — were Herb Brooks’ pregame words to Team USA before its unfathomable win against the U.S.S.R. in 1980.
And then, Emrick’s “signature,” his good sense of matters, his it’s-still-just-a-game perspective:
“In a shootout, in the bottom of the eighth, with two on, a goalie and a shooter — it was [T.J.] Oshie, the last to stand.” And then he was done.
Throughout the telecast, Emrick enhanced the game, flavored it — no one’s better prepared to deliver parenthetical player info and neat tidbits — without ever being intrusive, maudlin or showy. He’s too modest and polite for that.
That’s another special thing about Emrick. He’s the same sweetheart off the air as he is on. He does his same, human best for the dad and his kid in the elevator as he does for hundreds of thousands of viewers he speaks to — speaks with — at once.
Saturday morning, we had three hours of Emrick to enjoy. Even what he did with stats was extra special. After reciting the shootout success rates of the shooters and goalies, Emrick paused then said these numbers are only significant if you regard the players, in such a game, “as robots.”
And some of his best moments came when he chose to say — when he knew to say — nothing, when he allowed TV to do all the talking.
And to think I still hadn’t gotten over his intro to Rangers-Devils from Yankee Stadium on Jan. 26: “Two heated rivals take it outside.”
More Saturday hockey: This was what it must be like to live in Hawaii, when the day’s best, live sports attraction from the North American East ends before lunch.
U.S.-Russia ended in New York at 10:20 a.m., releasing many of us from TV’s tether with all day to do other things, things with salt and shovels. For a Saturday, it was a neat kind of weird. Watching college basketball after that game seemed unappealing.
Big Sheet Hockey: The larger Olympic rinks make for more sustained attractive hockey, not the ponderous, crowd-the-boards, push-and-shove, clog-and-slog stuff the NHL too often features.
Big ice hockey relies on vision, speed, skating and stamina. Heck, to engage in obligatory, NHL-style brutality means first having to reach one’s target. Good passing is not preferred, it’s demanded. And even lopsided games hold eye-appeal for their tempo.
Perhaps it was no coincidence the Russians tied the game at two on a power play following a penalty to Dustin Brown, the L.A. Kings’ captain from Ithaca. Brown’s game is reliant on excessively physical and occasionally illegal play. His game seems ill-suited for the “big sheet” game.
And so, after making a bad cross-ice pass that became a giveaway-and-go, Brown nailed Vlad Tarasenko, a defenseman who was nowhere near the puck. He was caught. Two miserable moves in three seconds. And then the Russians quickly tied the game, 7:16 left.
Analyst Ed Olczyk gave Brown a see/speak-no-evil pass. That Brown wasn’t seen again on the ice — not in regulation nor OT — was well worth the telling.
Olczyk did rebound with a score at game’s end, noting the Blues’ Oshie, shootout star, scored, then pointed down ice to send his regards to U.S. goalie Jonathan Quick. It was one of those moments that made Richard Sherman apologists seem foolish.
In the handshake line, Oshie was seen embracing Tarasenko, his Blues’ teammate.
Roving reporter/analyst Pierre McGuire can’t conduct decent interviews, but he made the tout of the telecast prior to the shootout. When discussion turned to “who?” for the U.S., McGuire quickly said “Oshie,” adding shootouts are his specialty.
Apparently taking its cue from Quick, who was seen plaintively gesturing toward his left post after Russia scored to temporarily take a 3-2 lead, NBC produced close-up footage of the net slightly off its mooring, the reason the goal was disallowed. Well done, NBC!
Questions too late for answers: Why place that game on NBCSN, a lesser and more unfamiliar destination for viewers than NBC? NBC’s Olympics decisions remain mysterious.
And as long as NBC cut to Vladimir Putin after Russia scored, why not show him after the U.S. scored? Where’s TV’s Jerry Jones Treatment when we need it?
Regardless, it wasn’t an easy morning to work up a good hate for the Russians; so many of them known — and admired — from the NHL. And Russia’s goal that was waved off with 4:40 left, well, that puck likely was going in, either way.
But all things considered, it was a special Saturday morning to be watching TV and listening to Doc Emrick. Especially here in Hawaii, where it continues to snow.
Begging to differ on Yankees’ radio duo
Quote of the Week: Don Bouloukos, VP of CBS Radio NY, in a statement announcing the return of John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman to Yankees broadcasts, called them “New York’s most recognizable broadcast team.”
That’s called leaving it open to interpretation.
Late yesterday morning then into the afternoon, while NBCSN aired live Olympic ice dancing, NBC aired an infomercial, then a movie. Crazy.
Why are so many surprised — even shocked — Canadian Olympians have been dressed in “team black,” as opposed to the nation’s classic red and white? Hey, you make a deal with Nike and you sell your soul, starting with your soles.
The Corner of Sochi and Gus Johnson: It seems obvious NBC has instructed its Olympic event commentators to holler as often and as loudly as they can. Pre-fab excitement!
John Andariese, winner of this year’s NBA’s Curt Gowdy Award for broadcasting, is a great call for a great guy.
So Jets defensive back Ed Reed, 35 and a former University of Miami student-athlete, had $50,000 in cash stolen from his car. You got a problem with that? Maybe he was going to buy a couple of PSLs.