It's official: Rick is back!!!!

[Hoss]

You're making it sound like he's mixing up players a lot. It's a rarity. The only one I noticed against the Caps was Legwand for Bogosian. There are no spotters in hockey. Maybe there should be.

I don't think I would say it's a lot or rare. It's noticeable. I believe he actually referred to somebody on the Jets as either Lindqvist or Hornqvist at one point (they don't have anybody by either name).

Again, I'm not saying it's unbearable. It is. It's just noticeable and not something he was doing before even half as much as he does now.

[North Buffalo]

The bolded is just it. Rick has never been that descriptive. He's probably never said "here's a slapshot from the left point... (goalie) makes a blocker save" in his life. A lot has always been left to the imagination. The move to TV fit his style perfectly. Guys like Emrick just make your brain hurt. Rick provides the color and the texture to what we're seeing. Radio listeners who know Rick and know hockey and have a good imagination will be fine. The others... I do feel for them.

Actually he used to be very descriptive in his prime, but better than Doc could ever hope to be, " Schoenfeld winds up from the point and whistles one just over top of the net, almost ripped the goalies head off".... His broadcasts were energetic and detailed when I was young, not so much now, but agreed still great to listen too, but not good enough for radio.

[Stoner]

OK, OK.

 

One thing led to another and I found Danny Gallivan's entry on Wikipedia. Danny did Montreal games for decades. I believe Rick must have grown up listening to and idolizing the man. Rick has often told the story of looking down press row in the Montreal forum and seeing Danny holding a pencil instead of a microphone after the "stick mic" was phased out in favor of a headset.

 

There's a lot of Danny in Rick:

 

 

Gallivan was known for his colourful descriptions of action on the ice. Hard shots became "cannonading drives"; saves were "scintillating", "larcenous" or "enormous" rather than merely spectacular; and, after a save, pucks tended to get caught in a goalie's "paraphernalia" (goalie equipment). If the goaltender made a fantastic or impossible save, he would refer to it as a "hair raising save" or that the goalie "kicked out his pad in rapier-like fashion" to foil a "glorious scoring opportunity". He would use words such as "anemic" to describe an ineffective offence or powerplay. He also coined phrases like "nowhere near the net", when a shot would go wide, comment that "there has not been a multitudinous amount of shots" to describe a game with a "dire dearth" of shots on net, would mention that a defender was "wasting valuable seconds in the penalty" when they were ragging the puck, and would almost always announce, "and the penalty has expired!" at the end of a penalty.

 

Passes from the corner and through the crease area would always feature Gallivan shouting "centred right out in front!!". The ultimate Gallivanism was a word he coined: the "spinarama," which described a player evading a check or when a player would deke a defender with a sudden 180- or 360-degree turn. Its chief practitioner was Montreal Canadien Serge Savard so that the move was also known as "The Savardian Spinarama". Many players were also known to "dipsy-doodle" with the puck, or come out of their own zone "rather gingerly". When a university professor wrote to Gallivan protesting that there was no such word as "cannonading", Gallivan wrote back: "There is now." The Canadian Oxford Dictionary now includes an entry for "spinarama".

 

Like many hockey announcers, he would often shout whenever a goal was scored, louder with the Montreal Canadiens. On the down-side, his style was unmodulated, nearly always intense, so that a goal or near-goal towards the end of a 7-1 game sounded very similar to that of a 2-1 game.

[Thorner]

There are people that don't like "ScoooOOOOOOOOOoores?" What, are you just not that into "Shaaaaauuuggggghhht" as well?

 

RJs "Shaaaaaauugggggght" sounds fun cause his voice cracks and the word changes tone as it goes. Dunleavy's "Scoooooooooooooores" is annoying because it's maddeningly monotone the whole way though.

[dudacek]

If I didn't think RJ was the greatest ever, Gallivan would be my pick.

Very much from the same school and so in tune with (and major contributors to) the romance of the game.

[Taro T]

If I didn't think RJ was the greatest ever, Gallivan would be my pick.

Very much from the same school and so in tune with (and major contributors to) the romance of the game.

As much as I liked RJ & JL together, at best they were the 2nd best team ever. Danny Gallivan & Dick Irvin were the best combo ever.