Do you listen to Hockey on the radio?

[yave1964]

It is at most a slight exaggeration to state that without the deep rich voice of Bruce Martyn coming across the fifty thousand watts of WJR in the evening, I might not have become a Hockey fan.

  Growing up in Central Ohio in the seventies, I went to a game or two at the old Olympia in Detroit who was originally from there, I would look forward to those games, the car ride, listening to stories about long ago players such as Howe, Delvechio, Abel, Red Kelly and Sawchuk. Same stories pretty much every trip but I grew to love them. And the games were amazing, the Wings were dreadful and I truly do not remember them winning once when I saw them live as a kid but it did not matter. Just being there was magic.

  The all Star game was televised, I would sit mesmerized soaking in the players whom I never got to see except once or twice a year. This was waaayyyyy before ESPN and all the rest saturated us with everything sports.

  My hockey for the most part was on the radio, listening to 760 AM and hearing Bruce Martyn make games exciting even when the Wings were awful, he would make a 3-0 first period deficit seem exciting and fun. Martyn along with Sid Abel filled many a winter night, hearing how the awful Wings were sooo close in the latest 5-2 defeat.

  I have taken to listening to hockey on the radio again in the last several years and do you know what? It still works. Paul Woods (an underachieving winger from my childhood) and Ken Kal still bring the game to life.

  It translates better to radio than any sport I know save for baseball with its slow pace that allows the announcer to paint a picture. Hockey does the same thing, a good announcer on the radio will bring the game to life, often in ways that television cannot. I listen to the Jackets on the radio as well and find them to be better that way than television. They remind me of my Dead Wings, lol and bring my childhood memories back as the announcer explains the latest 3-1 loss as if it were a victory.

  So the question is, does anyone else enjoy Hockey on the radio?

 

[hf101]

Absolutely.  As like you I grew up listening to some hockey, but mostly baseball.  We drove a couple of hours to the cabin and back most Fri and Sunday nights.   My father carried around his portable radio everywhere he went.  I'll compare the amount he used his radio to the obsession we now all have with our phones.  lol   If there was a game on and he was not watching it on the TV, he listened to it via the radio, and he never used headphones.  

 

Whenever I'm in the car and I know the Flyers are playing, it is an instinctive gesture to switch the radio to the Flyers broadcast.  Tim Saunders does an excellent call of the game, and he started just after I moved to Philly.    Chris Therrien recently has been the color commentator after his hockey career but he now is on TV and Coatse has moved from TV to the radio with Saunders.    Here is a clip,   

 

 

 

FYI, I've considered putting an app on the site for radio....   And it would play from a list of podcasts and broadcasts... would anyone like that here?

 

 

[brelic]

I love listening to it on the radio (or more accurately, internet radio) because it frees me up to do other things. I don't want to sit down for 2.5 hours, and this is a perfect solution! 

[ScottM]

I think the radio app would be a pretty cool idea, @hf101.

 

Anyway, if you include listening on the internet, my answer is yes as well. Obviously, where I live, I'm not going to be able to watch many Senators games on TV without purchasing Center Ice, so I always listen to at least a few Sens games on the TSN 1200 stream. Plus, those guys favor the Sens anyway, so it all works. Lol