NBC Sports NHL analyst Mike Milbury will not be returning to Stanley Cup playoff coverage this season.
In a statement released by NBC, Milbury said that he has “decided to step away” from his NBC role for the remainder of the postseason because he does not want his “presence to interfere with the athletes as they try to win the greatest trophy in sports.” Milbury’s decision follows more than a day of condemnation from the league, the network and elsewhere over a comment he made about women during a broadcast on Thursday.
As previously noted, Milbury was in a conversation about the benefits of the NHL ‘bubble’ when he said there were no women around to “disrupt [the players’] concentration.” He apologized Friday, saying that he was “trying to be irreverent and took it a step too far.” NBC pulled him from Friday’s Flyers-Canadiens Game 6.
Milbury, who has been with NBC since 2007, was one of a select few NBC NHL broadcasters working games on-site during the league’s restart of play. He was joined in Toronto by John Forslund and Brian Boucher. NBC also has Kenny Albert and Pierre McGuire on-site in the NHL’s other “hub city” of Edmonton.
The Milbury controversy comes on the heels of Fox Sports and Reds play-by-play voice Thom Brennaman being pulled from the air after he used an anti-gay slur during a broadcast.
It also comes during a protracted NHL season that has already seen NBC suspend and then fire NHL analyst Jeremy Roenick for making suggestive comments about colleagues Kathryn Tappen and Patrick Sharp during a podcast appearance, and Canada’s Rogers SportsNet fire longtime analyst Don Cherry for implying that Canadian immigrants were insufficiently grateful to the nation’s military.
[News from NBC Sports PR 8.22]
