Mike Milbury to fill in for Ed Olczyk as NBC hockey game analyst
Mike Milbury on air as an NHL analyst for NBC Sports. Credit: NBC Sports
NBC hopes to have Ed Olczyk back as its lead hockey analyst later this season after he concludes his current round of treatment for colon cancer. But in the meantime, the network will turn to a familiar and intriguing hockey personality to fill in: Mike Milbury.
“I’m sort of intrigued as well,” the former Islanders coach and general manager said Monday on a conference call to preview NBC’s NHL coverage, starting with Blues at Penguins on NBCSN Wednesday night.
Milbury and his colleagues are counting on his many years around the sport and the league, and long history of strong opinions, to ease his transition from studio to game booth.
“He brings an awful lot of experience, and has a well-formed opinion about everything, which we always look forward to,” play-by-play man Doc Emrick said.
“It’s not going to be his first rodeo; it’s probably going to be closer to his 4,000th. So I will look forward to hearing what he’s got to say and I think our listeners will, too. He is going to be as well-informed a temp as we could ever hire to sit in for Eddie until that sooner-rather-than-later [return] occurs.”
Milbury, 65, has worked games on-site before, including one in Boston with Kenny Albert last season, so he is not a complete novice. Still, he plans to tread lightly, if he is capable of that.
“It’s a new gig for me, but when somebody goes down as Edzo has done, everybody has to sort of step in and fill a void,” he said. “I think working with Doc and Pierre [McGuire], two guys that have encyclopedic knowledge of the game, I don’t think I’m going to need to feed you any more than what I can take from my observations as an analyst and someone who’s been around the game for over 40 years now.
“These guys can give you the background. I’m going to just try to stick to the interpretation of the action on the ice and get out of the way as much as possible for one of the best broadcasters in the history of broadcasting in Doc Emrick. It’ll be a change. It’ll be different. I’m excited to get it started. I’m a little curious to see how it all plays out.”
Olczyk has been NBC’s lead analyst since 2006. It is not clear when he will be able to return. Milbury already is set to work the NHL Winter Classic between the Sabres and Rangers at Citi Field on Jan. 1.
Executive producer Sam Flood said he visited Olczyk recently and found him “in good spirits and going through all the doctors’ plans and orders to get him back and ready to go for hopefully the back end of the season.”
Flood said the hope is that adding Milbury will make for a “fun trio, but that seat in the booth will always be Ed Olczyk’s . . . So Mike is going to fill those shoes and happily get out of that seat the day that Edzo is ready to come back to work.”
McGuire said Milbury’s coaching acumen helps him as an analyst, presumably referring more to his time at the helm of the Bruins in the early 1990s than the Islanders.
“Most people that have a lot of success in the booth upstairs, in hockey anyway, they were either goalies or really good coaches,” McGuire said. “What Mike Milbury doesn’t get enough credit for is he was not a good coach, he was an outstanding coach. He could really break the game down for players . . . I think Mike’s going to do great in his new role.”
In addition to wishing Olczyk a speedy recovery, Flood and the NBC announcers also noted the death on Sunday of longtime announcer Dave Strader, who worked select games for the network last spring despite advanced cancer.
Emrick recalled getting to know Strader when both were calling AHL games decades ago.
“We have that overriding memory of last spring of Dave’s gallant energy he showed us with this playoff calls,” Emrick said.
McGuire was asked what he thought of the Islanders’ chances of re-signing John Tavares, who is in the final year of his contract, and was less than optimistic.
“I think it’s going to be very difficult the longer it goes,” McGuire said. “This will not be like the Steven Stamkos situation in Tampa where obviously you had a building that was in great shape, you had a stable owner in Jeffrey Vinik and you had an infrastructure of young players that Steven was really comfortable with.
“I think it becomes more difficult as the season goes along. Clearly the new ownership with the Islanders is outstanding, with Scott Malkin and Jon Ledecky . . . They’re an enlightened ownership group and have made some pretty significant headway in terms of finding a place to play and building a proper organization.
“But Tavares is a tough one because of what happened in Edmonton this past offseason [with Connor McDavid getting an eight-year, $100 million contract]. I don’t think it will be very easy for the Islanders to get this done.”
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
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