Kings find their man after Miller
Alex Faust, 28, will call games on TV next season. Fox expected to stay as analyst.
Alex Faust, 28, is hired as team’s play-by-play announcer for TV, taking over for the retired Bob Miller.
The Kings knew they could never replace Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Miller, whose health problems led him to retire in April after 44 seasons of calling their games with a storyteller’s charm and a unique historic perspective. In choosing his successor for their TV play-by-play job, they went outside the box to hire 28-year-old Alex Faust, who acknowledged he wasn’t a die-hard hockey fan growing up but has immersed himself in the sport since he called hockey games for Northeastern University’s student radio station.
The Kings had given onair auditions to several announcers last season while Miller recovered from a stroke. Brooklyn-born Faust, whose hiring was announced Thursday, wasn’t among them, and his relatively low national profile didn’t make him an obvious choice.
“Believe me, it wasn’t an obvious outcome for me either,” he said, recalling that he initially hoped to merely get an interview with Fox executives and put his name in their minds for the future.
“The expectation isn’t that I’m going to replace Bob Miller, because that’s just impossible to do. When you’re there for 44 years, you build up a rapport with the audience and you build a relationship with the audience, and I know he developed a relationship even beyond the TV sphere of going out and meeting people at events or meeting fans at games. That’s part of the job responsibility for me, for me to get to know fans, for fans to get to know me, and hopefully it all works out over the long haul.”
Jim Fox is expected to continue as the TV analyst. Radio play-by-play announcer Nick Nickson and commentator Daryl Evans also are expected to return next season.
Faust has done play-byplay of college football, basketball and lacrosse for ESPNU and also has worked for NESN. In addition, he has done radio play-by-play for the Utica (N.Y.) Comets of the American Hockey League and has freelanced on NBCSN’s hockey coverage and on the Tennis Channel.
Kings President Luc Robitaille was heavily involved in the search to fill a coveted job that attracted many candidates. Through it all, Faust stood out.
“We sat with all the folks at Fox, and they had sent us the reels of a bunch of different people, and we had a small meeting a couple weeks ago and we chatted in the room,” Robitaille said. “We were all prepared. We all had our favorites without anybody talking to each other, and we listened to them. After listening to everyone and hearing everyone’s points and what we were looking for, it came down to Alex.”
For Robitaille, Faust’s youth isn’t a drawback. “It’s kind of funny. If you listen to him, you don’t really know about his age,” Robitaille said. “I look at it from a standpoint where I’m glad this guy is going to come in and work with us and be with us for a long time.
“We’re not looking to replace Bob. That was the No. 1 factor. We thought it was important to get a national voice, someone that when you hear the city of Los Angeles and Kings fans you feel almost like you’re watching a national broadcast.”
helene.elliott@latimes.com Twitter: @helenenothelen
‘The expectation isn’t that I’m going to replace Bob Miller, because that’s just impossible to do.’ — Alex Faust, Kings’ new TV play-by-play announcer