The NHL season is scheduled to begin in less than a week, but NBC’s decision on Mike Emrick’s replacement is not imminent.
The New York Post reported Thursday that NBC will wait until later in the shortened NHL season before naming a replacement for the retired Emrick, with Kenny Albert, John Forslund and Brendan Burke the “leading candidates” and Mike Tirico a potential dark horse.
Emrick retired shortly after the Stanley Cup Final last September. He had been NBC’s lead NHL voice since it began airing games in the 2005-06 season.
Albert has been NBC’s secondary NHL voice the past several seasons and in 2014 filled in for Emrick on Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final. That was only national Stanley Cup Final telecast in the U.S. called by someone other than Emrick or Gary Thorne since 1992. While Albert would seem a likely choice, it would be unusual for the lead voice of a network property to hold a more prominent for a competing network, as Albert does calling NFL games for Fox.
Emrick’s departure is the biggest change coming to NBC’s NHL coverage, though perhaps not the only one. NBC has given no word on the status of Mike Milbury since he left the NHL “bubble” under controversy last summer.
[News from NYP 1.7]
