Mike Milbury Will Be Filling In For Eddie O In The Broadcast Booth, Can I Pay Extra Just To Hear Doc Emrick Instead?
USAToday – Mike Milbury makes it clear that he is not replacing Ed Olczyk as an NBC analyst as much as he is holding his place.
He views NBC’s decision to name him as Mike Emrick’s analyst partner while Olczyk recovers from colon cancer surgery as NBC’s way of embracing the NHL-concept of “next man up.” Milbury and Emrick will be together Wednesday, Oct. 4, when the Blues play in Pittsburgh at 8 p.m on NBC Sports Network.
Replacing Eddie Olczyk with Mike Milbury is like replacing an incredibly refreshing, ice cold Dr. Pepper from one of those new fountain soda machines where you can add like 40 different flavors to your soda, with a boiling hot bottle of Mr. Pibb that has been left outside in the midsummer heat for at least three weeks. In their most basic form, yes, they are the same. Both hockey analysts hired by NBCSN. But put them up against one another and one is clearly far superior.
Now obviously I didn’t choose to write about this change in the broadcast booth just to take a cheap shot at Mr. Pibb. But because I honestly think after hearing Milbury call a couple of games with Doc, I’d be willing to shell out even more money to those corrupt bastards at Comcast to give me the option of having a Doc Emrick only broadcast on all games. Nothing was better than when Milbury was only on during the intermission reports. You could take a shower between periods, you could take a shit between periods, you could catch up on the latest episode of all your favorite Barstool podcasts between periods. You could do anything you wanted during that time to avoid having to hear him say the same angry old man shit over and over again. But now that he’s going to be calling the games with Doc? Well we no longer have the luxury of that 20-minute shit break.
And how do you think Doc feels about this? One of the best to ever do it. 5 Emmy Awards. And now his #1 and #2 colleagues are Mike Milbury and Pierre McGuire. I’ve long been a Pierre apologists. I know plenty of people hate when he chimes in to talk about where every player on the ice first learned how to ice skate but I can appreciate a man who is that big of a hockey nerd. With that being said, his charm wears off very quickly when there’s no Edzo in the booth to remind Doc that everything’s gonna be okay.
So here’s to hoping Eddie O kicks the shit out of his treatment. Obviously everybody has been pulling for him ever since the diagnosis. But let’s just hope it’s an even speedier recovery than we could imagine for.