Media

NESN calling on candidates to follow Jack Edwards for Bruins games

Dave Goucher (left), who calls Las Vegas Knights games with Shane Hnidy, seems to be the ideal choice to call the Bruins on NESN next season.

By Chad Finn, The Boston Globe

June 1, 2024

The curtains fell on the Bruins’ season May 17 with a 2-1 loss to the Florida Panthers in Game 6 of their second-round playoff series.

The end of the season meant that Jack Edwards’s 17-year run as the spirited play-by-play voice on NESN’s Bruins broadcasts was also coming to a close.

Edwards, who has been dealing with a mystifying speech complication for nearly two years now, announced in April that this season would be his last in the booth.

The final hours of the season, and the days after, were spent giving Edwards a proper salute rather than speculating on who might follow him alongside color analyst Andy Brickley as the new play-by-play voice.

But two weeks after the season’s conclusion, the quest to find Edwards’s successor by NESN — and the Bruins, who have a significant say in this — is well underway.

A NESN spokesperson said Thursday that the network has no update regarding the search. But here’s what I’ve gathered from talking with people on background who are involved in the process.

· NESN and the Bruins have reached out to Dave Goucher, who is very familiar to Bruins fans. He called their games on the radio from 2000-17 before he was hired as the TV play-by-play voice for the expansion Vegas Golden Knights, where he calls games with former Bruins defenseman Shane Hnidy. His ecstatic “Bergeron! Bergeron! Bergeron!” call of Patrice Bergeron’s overtime goal to cap a comeback against the Maple Leafs in the first round of the 2013 playoffs is among the most iconic in modern Boston sports history. Goucher enjoys his job in Las Vegas, but he and his wife are New Englanders who still spend their summers in Rhode Island. He would be the ideal choice, and hopefully the Bruins and NESN will make him an offer worthy of his talents.

· According to one potential candidate, NESN is putting together a group of prospective play-by-play voices to audition at its Watertown studios. The job is being pursued not only by local play-by-play voices, but ones with established national backgrounds. It is a coveted opening.

· Alex Faust, the Northeastern grad and former Los Angeles Kings announcer, was presumed to have the inside track after the season. (Someone even changed his Wikipedia page to call him the Bruins announcer.) He did fine work in the substitute role, but it’s uncertain whether NESN considers him one of the leading candidates. He does not have an audition lined up, but perhaps his work during the season gives him a credit for that.

Edwards announced in April that this season would be his last in the booth.

Perkins throws 1-2 punch

In his role as one of the designated hot-takers that rank a notch or two below Stephen A. Smith on the ESPN depth chart, Kendrick Perkins doesn’t just say absurd things, he’s more or less required to by the parameters of his job.

Not that that validates some of his scattershot takes on the Celtics this season, which include a recent declaration that Jaylen Brown is their best player. It’s not the silliest thing that has ever been said about the Celtics on ESPN (more on that in the next item), but it was contradictory at best given that Perkins voted Jayson Tatum first-team All-NBA but did not have Brown among the 15 players on his ballot.

During a conference call Thursday, I asked Perkins for context on his Brown/Tatum opinion-of-the-moment.

“I see a lot of people getting in their feelings, like, oh, the national media, they’re trying to pit the two against one another,” he said, “but that’s not the case. It’s actually a good thing.”

He said that the “who’s better?” conversation is a tried-and-true one that happens whenever an NBA team has two obvious stars.

“I mean, hell, they were doing it with Kobe and Shaq,” he said. “That should be a badge of honor for them. It shouldn’t be nothing like, ‘Well, we’re trying to separate the two.’ It should make them go out there and perform and continue to put up the numbers that they’re putting up.”

Perkins acknowledged that he’s heard from Celtics fans about his takes.

“They get mad at me,” he said. “I have to tell them I don’t work for the Boston Celtics. I actually work for ESPN, which I can’t be a homer, I can’t be biased. If I feel some type of way, I’m going to say it.

“Do I wish they would run for the championship? Hell yeah, I’m going to root for them to win the championship, but I’ve still got to do my job.”

Take it or leave it

As for that aforementioned terrible take, it came from “Get Up” host Mike Greenberg on Wednesday’s program. Somehow devoid of logical or interesting angles to take on a team that is 12-2 in the playoffs and 76-20 overall this season, Greenberg offered this gem on the relationship between Tatum and Brown:

“When Jaylen Brown wins that award [the Larry Bird Trophy as Eastern Conference finals MVP] in the moment that happens, the rest of the team just goes crazy,” he said. “They all were so genuinely [happy], they’re all so genuinely excited for him. And you did not seem to think that it was mirrored in Jayson.”

In an amusing bit of failed symmetry, Tatum was smiling and clapping in the clip shown over Greenberg’s words.

Now, I’m not a beat writer, but I’ve jumped on the Celtics coverage bandwagon every postseason since Tatum has been here. I’ve written columns from 10 of this year’s playoff games, and I can tell you and Greenberg this: I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tatum happier than he was after Game 4.

Greenberg’s take is the stupidest Celtics take in the wide and deep sea of stupid Celtics takes — though I don’t doubt some of his colleagues will try to top it before June 6.