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For Bolts radio duo, being fans at heart is key to their success

 
DIRK SHADD   |   Times Tampa Bay Lightning radio broadcasters Dave Mishkin, left, and Phil Esposito are seen in their broadcast booth just prior to Game 5 of the Eastern Conference final of the Stanley Cup Playoffs Saturday, May 19, 2018 in Tampa.
DIRK SHADD | Times Tampa Bay Lightning radio broadcasters Dave Mishkin, left, and Phil Esposito are seen in their broadcast booth just prior to Game 5 of the Eastern Conference final of the Stanley Cup Playoffs Saturday, May 19, 2018 in Tampa.
Published May 21, 2018

As the last tension-filled seconds of a tight playoff game wind down, high above the Amalie Arena ice, the play-by-play man becomes increasingly animated.

Dave Mishkin, eyes bulging, face purple, jumps from his seat, holding the headset with his left hand, his right hand balled into a fist he pumps repeatedly.

"It is over! It is over!" Mishkin shouts. "The Lightning win Game 5, 3-2. They hold on. What a performance by (goalie) Andrei Vasilevskiy!"

Sitting to his right, NHL Hall of Famer and team founder Phil Esposito sits calmly, clasping his hands together, watching his long-time radio partner's trademark explosion of enthusiasm as the Lightning take the lead in the Eastern Conference finals.

"Sometimes he even scares me," Esposito says with a chuckle earlier in the evening.

• • •

For Mishkin and Esposito, who have been broadcasting games together on the Tampa Bay Lightning Radio Network for 16 years, heard locally on 970 WFLA AM, the night in their equipment-filled broadcast booth begins a good four hours earlier.

Mishkin, his two children in tow, arrives first, shortly before 6 p.m. After dropping them off at their seats, then talking to a reporter, he settles into his chair.

Esposito arrives later, pulling up the chair next to him.

But before hockey, there is the Preakness, the second leg of horse racing's Triple Crown.

As the horses head to the gate, the two men look up at the television on the booth's right wall.

"I like Justify. He's the No. 7 horse," says Esposito, who wore that number during his heyday with the Boston Bruins.

"Justify is starting to pull away," shouts Esposito, pretending to call the race his horse would eventually win.

• • •

Just before the puck drops, Esposito talks of the need for the Lightning to get off to a fast start.

"You have to get off to a good start so you keep Washington down," says Esposito. "But I gotta tell you, they're gonna come out, the Caps, guns blazing."

It does not take long for the play-by-play man to go full Mishkin.

Almost as if he were listening, Lightning center Cedric Paquette shoots past Capital goalie Braden Holtby just 19 seconds into the first period.

"Score!," shouts Mishkin, for the first time of the night. "Paquette! Nineteen seconds in it's one-nothing Lightning!"

It is a stark contrast to the bookish Miskhin's calm demeanor most of the night, sitting upright, holding a pen between his hands as he calls the game.

"J.T. Miller and Jay Beagle to the right of Holtby," he announces, describing a first-period faceoff between opposing centers in a soothingly staccato clip. "Won cleanly by Miller."

And an even sharper contrast to how he calls a Capitals' goal.

"Left point, Ovechkin, score," he deadpans as the Capitals' Alex Ovechkin puts it in the net with 96 seconds left to play.

As Mishkin guides listeners through the ups and downs of what started out like a runaway Lightning win, Esposito offers the analysis of a man who scored 717 NHL goals — complete with groans, moans and table pounding — as the Bolts' sharp start turns sloppy and threatens to end badly.

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"Ah, Kooch, what the heck is that?" he yells, after a bad pass toward the end of the first period by the Lighting's Nikita Kucherov.

• • •

At their core, Mishkin and Esposito are fans and they both say they have succeeded as a radio duo as a result.

This season, the pair averaged nearly 23,000 listeners 18 and older per game, according to Nielsen.

"That's our highest regular season rating," says Matt Sammon, the team's director of broadcasting, adding that he expects the post-season ratings to come in even higher.

"I am a fan," says Esposito. "You hear me. I'm going 'oooh,' 'ahhh,' banging on the table. I'm into it. It's the only way for me to watch a hockey game."

Mishkin, 48, was born in Manhattan and started out as a Ranger and Mets fan, but moved to the Boston area as a child, where he was influenced by the likes of storied Boston Celtic radio announcer Johnny Most, with his excitable demeanor and gravelly voice. Mishkin first entered the broadcast booth in the late 1980s, calling games for his Yale University hockey team.

"That's when I made the decision that I was going to feel free to be emotional about something positive that happened for the team, or university, I was representing," says Mishkin of his broadcast style. "It's like when I was a 12-year-old watching hockey or basketball and something big happens. I probably react the same way."

• • •

Mishkin is too young to remember Esposito at his peak. But by the time he interviewed for the job in 2002, after minor league announcing stops in Johnstown and Hershey in Pennsylvania, Mishkin was intimately familiar with the Hall of Famer's world-class resume.

"If there is any kind of awe factor, it dissipated quickly in five seconds of meeting Phil," says Mishkin. "He carries zero airs. He is as real as it gets and as personable as can be.

But Esposito is not shy about criticizing the players.

As the Bolts' initial crisp passing and forechecking devolves into sloppy puck handling and spending far too much time in their own end, Esposito grouses.

After the period ends, he talks about why he brings the shame.

"When I played, I prided myself on not making mental errors," says Esposito. "When I see guys make mental errors, I can't help myself. I just say it."

If the players object to his bluntness, Esposito says he hasn't heard it.

"They don't ever say anything to me," he says. "They don't like it sometimes when I criticize, but they understand that I am just doing my job like they are doing theirs."

That approach didn't work in New York, Esposito says.

"When I retired from playing I went in the booth at Madison Square Garden," he says of his days broadcasting Ranger games. "I was a little too blunt for them. A little too critical."

Not so here in Tampa.

"I'm not going to change my way of doing this job, because I believe it is the right way to do it," he says. "If it isn't, then I wouldn't do it."

• • •

In 16 years together, Mishkin and Esposito have developed a deep mutual respect and an instinctive understanding.

"Listen," says Esposito of Mishkin. "He follows the play as well as anyone I have ever been around in broadcasting."

"We have worked between 500 and 1,000 games together," says Mishkin. "I think that I know what he likes and doesn't like in terms of what is happening on the ice."

Esposito jokes that one day, he wants to record Mishkin's voice to make money.

"I really thought very seriously about getting his voice recorded and putting it on an alarm clock and selling it all over the place," he says. "When he yells, he scares the hell out of me."

Contact Howard Altman at haltman@tampabay.com or (813) 225-3112. Follow @haltman