5 questions for... Mike Emrick
NBC’s Mike “Doc” Emrick talks the Golden Knights’ magical run, a different kind of expansion season and his broadcast partners’ cancer fights with The Post’s Justin Terranova.
Q: Eddie Olczyk (colon) and Pierre McGuire (prostate) both battled cancer this year. What does it mean to be calling a Stanley Cup finals with them?
A: It’s an encouragement to me in the way that they both dealt with it. Eddie’s run was a lot longer, six months, the way that he handled it and shared it was a way to inspire others. It was a way of saying, “You can get through this. It will take time, but you can come out the other side.” It was inspiring to us that he did come into work even as he was going through treatment. The fact that I’ve got the two guys back again and I am very thankful to God for. Q: How do you approach a Game 7 from the booth?
A: Whether it’s a Game 7 or a goldmedal game, we have more people who may not watch on a regular basis. Our mandate to all on our crew is to not treat this like a normal hockey audience. … With this Stanley Cup final it could be even more so that way because we are dealing with something that is probably transcending all of sports with the arrival of Vegas. And that might carry even more of a non-hockey audience than we’ve ever had before.
Q: What does it mean for an expansion team to reach the Stanley Cup?
A: They’ve made brilliant selections. Of the current 26 guys they have on their roster, 17 were expansion draftees. They made good choices and they kept them and they won with them. Expansion teams in our sport, Washington in ’74-’75, they won one game on the road. And I remember Ron Low, their backup goaltender, told me that they won their last road game in Oakland and they picked up a trash basket and held it over their heads like it was the Stanley Cup. Can you imagine that? Q: What has made the Golden Knights so good? A: They don’t fall behind, they get big saves from their goaltender [MarcAndre Fleury], they have a lot of talented guys that pulled together as a team and had this show-me approach. Q: What does this Finals trip mean for Alex Ovechkin’s legacy? A: Keith Jones said this and I agreed. You can compare how Alex is playing in these playoffs with another legend named Mark Messier. Mark could take over a game with his presence, even if he may not have scored a goal. I was there the night Mark had the hat trick in New Jersey [Game 6 of 1994 Eastern Conference finals]. He was going to will them to win that game whether he scored a goal or not and that’s what Ovechkin did in Game 6 against the Lightning.