Kings announcer Bob Miller loves hockey, and it shows

By Diane Pucin

April 24, 2010 12 AM PT

It is the patter of a salesman, an enthusiastic and knowledgeable salesman.

“Doughty at the left point, gives it to Brown, Brown at the far side, shot and a save. Rebound, save in front, loose puck.

“Modin S-C-O-R-R-R-E-S.”

This is Game 2 of the Kings’ Stanley Cup playoff series against the Canucks, and Bob Miller, the team’s longtime play-by-play man -- tall, bald, avuncular -- is at his finest. It is in Vancouver, enemy territory. His voice goes up a little, down a little, words gathering speed as the puck rockets across the ice and flies into the net.

The Kings are still down by a goal. Then 35 seconds later, and as if sensing what is coming, Miller’s words gain speed again, chasing the Kings’ Anze Kopitar across the rink, and from a scrum around the Vancouver goal.

“Back up to center ice comes Kopitar. Kopitar down the middle, pass right side, S-C-O-R-R-R-E by Simmonds and the Kings have tied the game.”

The Kings, after Friday’s blowout loss, are now down three games to two in this best-of-seven series, with Game 6 at Staples Center on Sunday. It is win or go home.

Yet through it all, it is Miller -- in his 50th year as a broadcaster, 37 with the Kings -- whose play-by-play for Fox Sports pulls us in, tracking the puck as it explodes off a stick or crazily shoots past a goalie’s splayed body and pads.

At 71, he sees no reason to hide his enthusiasm for playoff hockey, not when his team has been known more for collapsing than for rising to greatness. The Kings last saw the postseason in 2002 and have never won the Stanley Cup, coming close only once, in 1993.

“It’s like I’m in the loop again,” said Miller, who was elected to the hockey Hall of Fame in 2000 despite the Kings’ woes over the years.

“If you’re not doing the playoffs, the season ends, you’re sitting at home and wishing you were with a team that was in. . . . You know there’s this excitement, but there you are, sitting at home, watching on TV.”

Luc Robitaille, the Kings’ legendary left wing and now the team’s president of business operations, said that if he closes his eyes and thinks about hockey on television, he hears Miller’s voice. “I don’t know how to describe it,” Robitaille said, “but his voice has a tone and that tone means hockey to me.”

Vin Scully, a fellow broadcasting Hall of Famer, is joyful for Miller.

“With a losing team, it’s a grind,” said the 82-year-old Dodgers legend, now in his 60th season with the team. “It’s very hard to hold on to your enthusiasm when it’s a bad game day after day after day.

“I salute Bob. It has to be extremely exciting for him, not just to go to the arena for another day of work, but you have the ‘I can’t wait to get there’ feeling because it’s truly meaningful.

“What Bob does is [he] sees the event with his eyes, not his heart,” Scully said. “Fans see the same event with their hearts. Manny Ramirez comes up, man on base, if he gets a hit the Dodgers win. So if he hits a fly ball, for that split second the fans see what they want to see. You hear them roar and then you hear the ‘ahh’ because it’s just a fly ball. An announcer can’t do that. An announcer wills himself to see what it is. Bob does that.”

Miller’s favorite moment is the so-called Miracle on Manchester -- Game 3 of the first round of the 1982 playoffs, when the Kings, down 5-0, beat the Edmonton Oilers in overtime.

Yet 1993 has his heart.

“In the Western [finals] against Toronto to go to the [Stanley Cup] finals, it was seven games and classic,” Miller said. “Game 7 was in Toronto when the Kings won it.” He pauses, relishing the memory. “Everybody in Canada wanted Montreal and Toronto in the finals.

“Wayne Gretzky tells a great story. He’s in an elevator going down on the morning of the seventh game and a security guard asks Wayne how he’s doing and that, starting about 10, 10:30 that night, with the celebration, it’s really going to be hectic on the ground floor. Wayne starts to step out of the elevator, turns to the security guard and says, ‘Don’t worry about your job tonight. Mine starts at 7:30 and the Kings are going to win.’

“I remember in the last minute, the Kings are ahead by one goal, Maple Leafs are buzzing around the Kings’ net . . . I’m sweating, shaking, telling myself you’ve got to just do the game, you can’t be a fan here, stop cheering. It was nerve-racking.

“With four seconds to go the Kings cleared the puck to center ice, I say, ‘Kings win, they’re four wins away from the Stanley Cup.’ I put that on my answering machine. It was unbelievable.”

Rogie Vachon, the beloved former Kings goalie, says Miller has perfect pitch for the NHL.

“Even if you’re not looking at the television you can follow the puck by Bob’s voice,” he said. “You always know which player has the puck, where the puck is.”

As Game 2 settled into a certain, tense cadence, tied after those frantic 35 seconds, Miller settled into a rhythm. When Vancouver fans began waving white towels, we heard a story.

“Fans are all waving towels here and that started in 1982 when Roger Neilson was the head coach here in Vancouver,” Miller said, explaining how Neilson was unhappy about a call in a playoff game. “Neilson put a towel on a hockey stick and waved it. When [the series] got back to Vancouver everybody was waving it.”

That touch of history came without the sense that the game was being ignored. It was being given depth.

At another point, the Vancouver crowd was chanting. But what was the chant? Certainly every avid hockey fan knew. But this is playoff hockey and maybe not all viewers are die-hard fans. So Miller told us. “Go, Can-ucks, go. Go, Can-ucks, go.”

Anticipating what listeners need is a gift.

“I watch a lot of hockey,” said Bob Borgen, who was Miller’s producer for 18 years, “and it’s mostly three-man crews, a lot of voices. What I like about Bob is that his voice has energy and excitement. His voice makes it interesting. The fact that he doesn’t have a signature call, I think, makes him better. Bob just tells it to you.”

Jim Fox, the talented analyst who played right wing for the Kings in the Miracle on Manchester game, has been Miller’s television partner for 20 years. “Without even seeing the game,” Fox said, “I can tell when there is something urgent happening just by his inflection.”

Though Miller’s contract is up this year, he said he’s not thinking about retirement and, except for a painful bout of shingles recently, still feels great.

“I’m not chasing Vin Scully’s record,” he said with a laugh.

At the Kings’ final regular-season home game, Miller was honored for his 50 years in broadcasting. He waved, almost shyly, when the crowd rose and cheered as the big screen at Staples Center announced the surprise tribute. Never one for the spotlight, he reflexively clenched and unclenched his fingers the entire time.

Mike Emrick, the premier play-by-play man for the NHL playoffs on Versus and NBC, puts it best, saying of Miller, “He never seems to want to be any other place.”

Fact is, Emrick is right.

“I still enjoy this,” Miller said the other day. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but right here.”

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