Before each Chicago Blackhawks dwelling recreation, they present the crew’s beginning lineup on the large video board.
Last season, Hawks followers watching from dwelling might’ve used a lineup for the TV sales space and studio crew.
Would play-by-play announcer Chris Vosters be joined by Patrick Sharp or Troy Murray?
Would Murray be within the TV sales space or on the radio with John Wiedeman?
Would Wiedeman share the radio sales space that evening with Caley Chelios, or would she be within the NBC Sports Chicago studio with Pat Boyle?
You might discover Colby Cohen both in-studio, between the benches or, occasionally, within the sales space. Did he get to assert mileage on his legs?
Former Hawks goalie Scott Darling could have occupied the identical chair within the studio, however his function on the published was a transferring goal.
No native TV lineup is similar for all native broadcasts, however even the Hawks and members of the crew admit they struggled for continuity and chemistry, so the modifications they made within the offseason quantity to greater than just some tweaks.
Sharp took a entrance workplace job with the Philadelphia Flyers, so the Hawks employed former Blues analyst Darren Pang to interchange him.
Cohen moved again to the Philadelphia space, and Darling’s function on the pre- and postgame present has been dialed again.
Former Hawks enforcer John Scott, a hockey podcaster, leads a bunch of latest visitor analysts that features Hawks greats Chris Chelios and Denis Savard and former NHL participant and coach Tony Granato. Other alumni or a celeb might drop in.
Charlie Roumeliotis, Boyle’s “Blackhawks Talk Podcast” associate, will seem periodically within the studio offering the identical recreation and locker room insights as he did final season.
Caley Chelios, Chris’ daughter and a former Tampa Bay Lightning radio analyst, will fill in for Pang when he does nationwide broadcasts, or radio in spot responsibility. But in any other case, she’s locked in as the primary analyst and associate to studio host Boyle, who’s coming into his twelfth season; Chelios, her third.
“I think one thing we learned was to create some stability and predictability to our booth,” Hawks Chairman and CEO Danny Wirtz informed the Tribune. “So it’s those two (Boyle and Caley Chelios), and some games we can add a third just to spice it up or if it’s a special night we’ll do that. But the core is the core now, which is great.”
“The Hawks are such a huge franchise, and especially this year (with Connor Bedard), there’s going to be a lot of eyes on them,” Scott stated.
Boyle echoed Wirtz’s sentiments.
“My guess is everybody wanted to bring some stability and bring some consistency to the product,” he stated.
The Hawks and Bulls’ partnership with NBC Sports Chicago runs out after this season, which implies the forged does too.
Boyle heard a few of the criticism of the studio and in-game broadcast, and he takes it personally, though lots of it wasn’t directed at him.
He took an lively function in serving to the “Blackhawks Pregame/Postgame Live” make up its new forged this summer season, and he recommended Scott.
“I was sitting there one night thinking about our future and how we’re going to get better as a studio show — because I’m competitive too,” Boyle stated. “We’ve won Emmys on this show, and I want to put out the best product possible.”
Boyle doesn’t need somebody on the present making an attempt to be Paul Bissonette — if that’s not their persona — and sounding pressured. But there are different methods to punch up the present.
“One thing I take when I watch TNT’s NBA show and their NHL show, it’s personality-driven,” he stated. “It’s reacting to social media and exhibiting a tweet: ‘This is what (Wayne) Gretzky said,’ ‘This is what Gretzky tweeted about Connor Bedard’s first objective.’
“That’s the kind of stuff we are looking to do and engage with fans that way, and also teach along the way and tell players’ stories. … We’re following the best reality show, and that’s sports. You never know what’s going to happen on a given night.”
Boyle thinks Scott can carry lots of these components — significantly humor.
“I felt like when I heard his podcast, he seemed really conversational, funny, didn’t take himself too seriously,” Boyle stated. “You can tell that he has a passion for the game.”
After some display screen testing, the Hawks and NBC felt Boyle and Scott had an awesome rapport on digicam.
“We are testing everybody now for studio,” stated Hawks president of enterprise operations Jaime Faulkner. “So we’re having you sit and really do a studio recreation with Pat Boyle, or with Caley. So we’re testing everyone to say, ‘Hey, do we see chemistry? Does this work? Are they a natural?’
“So we’ve put a lot more work this year into identifying with NBC who should actually be there and in what role.”
Faulkner has stated on a couple of event that Darling wasn’t put in one of the best place to succeed final season.
“We talked a lot last year about Scott (Darling). Unfortunately, we wanted him to be in one role, but because of everything that was going on he ended up having to do things we didn’t want him to do,” she stated. “He’d be an analyst, then he had to be the goalie expert and then had to do certain (other) things. We changed the process this year to make sure that we had the right people in the right role, but worked on that through the summer to identify that.”
Boyle believes Scott can hit the bottom working due to the form of leg work he already was doing for his podcast, which set him other than different potential candidates throughout this offseason’s search.
“You can’t simply say, ‘I’m a talker, you recognize, it’s hockey. Let’s do it,’ Boyle stated. “You’ve obtained to place some work into this.
“And he seems to be the type of person that is willing to go the extra mile and put the time and effort into doing the work and watching games and going to a morning skate and having a chat with a coach or a player.”
Scott added, “I sustain on each crew, proper? And you’re following each participant, each crew, each prospect pool, and it’s so much.
“I talked about hockey every day on my show. It’s not something where I’m coming in and I’m scrambling to try to figure out what’s going on in the league. What’s happening with the Hawks? It’s what I do.”
Viewers ought to count on a number of new wrinkles from the sport and studio reveals.
The pre- and postgame reveals will broadcast extra ceaselessly from a set within the United Center.
Viewers obtained a style of that when the NBC Sports Chicago panel interviewed Hawks normal supervisor Kyle Davidson.
“I would like to be at the rink,” stated Scott, who estimates he’ll make between 30 and 40 appearances. “It’s so much better to watch the game live.”
NBC Sports Chicago will host a pre- and postgame present for the season opener Tuesday in opposition to the Pittsburgh Penguins, although the sport itself airs on ESPN.
NBC Sports Chicago airs its first recreation Saturday when the Hawks play the Canadiens in Montreal.
In his Blues function, Pang was identified for his banter with coaches when he performed interviews between the benches, and he’ll do the identical for the Hawks ultimately.
“He’s going to start the season in the booth upstairs with Chris (Vosters), Faulkner said. “And as they start to build chemistry as the season moves on, he’ll probably call the game from between the benches.”
Boyle hopes followers welcome the modifications this upcoming season.
“I want to be entertaining, I want to be informative,” he stated. “I’ve been a sportscaster in Chicago for 19 years, and I’m actually happy with that.
“And like any other team that’s trying to evolve and get better, the Blackhawks studio TV team is trying to get better. That’s kind of where this started, and hopefully we’ll take another step in the right direction.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com