For many Boston Bruins fans, this remarkable season of achievement has been experienced through the words of a Midwesterner. Judd Sirott honed his broadcasting craft in the Windy City, but he’s now firmly entrenched in New England sports as radio play-by-play voice of the Boston Bruins alongside Bob Beers, the former Bruins defenseman turned analyst.
Sirott joined 98.5 The Sports Hub as play-by-play voice in 2017. Prior to that, Sirott served as host and fill in play-by-play announcer for the Chicago Blackhawks, voice of the Chicago Wolves of the American Hockey League for 12 seasons and Chicago Cubs broadcast teamer with WGN. He was twice awarded the Illinois Broadcasters Association Silver Dome Award for “Best Play-By-Play” broadcast in the Chicago market.
Billy Jaffe, whose first experience in broadcasting was calling a brawl-filled Michigan-Michigan State game at Joe Louis Arena with Sirott while both were still in college, sat down with Sirott during the Bruins’ break before the start of the Stanley Cup Final against the St. Louis Blues.
Billy Jaffe: What were your first few thoughts on getting the opportunity to come to Boston?
Judd Sirott: First of all humbled, privileged, thankful. The saying is, "Success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan. So if success has a thousand fathers, I probably had 10 times that many people help me get to this point. And it's been a long path. But I'm very thankful for the opportunity. To be able to work in a city like Boston, to be able to work for an Original Six franchise, to be a part of that community, I’m very thankful. It’s very humbling. It's been a great organization to work with. 98.5 The Sports Hub has been fabulous, from (director of programming) Mike Thomas and now Mary Menna, who runs the organization, to Rick Radzik and our producer, Howie Sylvester, who gave me the opportunity to work with Bob Beers and a great group of people. It’s been fabulous.
Jaffe: Was it intimidating going from a market like Chicago, albeit another Original Six team, to a market like Boston, because you are from Chicago, you're comfortable there?
Sirott: I don't know if that's the word I would use. Having worked in Chicago — and there are a lot of similarities, believe it or not, between the two cities — great sports teams, great fan bases, but also people who care very deeply about what matters locally, people who are from there, what their histories are about. For me, my job was to be able to dive headlong as much as I could into Boston Bruins history, dive into the community, to learn as much as I could, as fast as I could. On the plane, I'm reading everything from Derek Sanderson's books to Bobby Orr's books to everything I can devour, so I can learn everything I can about an Original Six franchise.
Jaffe: What was it about the Chicago Blackhawks when you were there that made them so special. I know they had good players. A lot of teams have good players. But what made them so successful?
Sirott: I'm a big believer in ownership and management, whether it's this sport or any other sport, or any other business venture, for that matter. So I think it started with Rocky Wirtz, the way he ran the team, the people he surrounded himself with — John McDonough, Jay Blunk, then obviously they bring in Stan Bowman, it was Joel Quenneville for a long time, while I was there, for a decade, and a cast around them of fabulous people, in marketing, public relations, the people in corporate sales. I think what they also understood was relationships, and how important they were. They had a way in which they treated their employees, and that went all the way from the intern that they hired during the summer all the way up to Jonathan Toews, the captain of the team. When the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup in 2010, the intern who worked in the office got the same ring as Jonathan Toews, the exact same ring. And that was the philosophy from the ownership on down. What also struck me about the Blackhawks is they never missed the small details, whatever that may be. The details mattered with them, and that, along with a strong work ethic and how they believed in relationships, that in many ways fueled what you saw for about a decade.
Jaffe: From a hockey perspective, what else did you learn about winning from the Blackhawks and also from the Chicago Wolves organization — a place you were with for 12 years? They won a lot, too.
Sirott: You and I were a part of a lot of that, going back to the Chicago Wolves. Let's go back there. Getting an opportunity to be a part of three championships — two in the IHL, one in the American Hockey League, then we came back for another one later, in 2008. You learn that in order to win a championships, there are a number of different factors that have to fall in your direction. Yes, you have to be playing well. You need some bounces, you need some breaks, you need some calls, you need to stay healthy. So you need all those things to sort of fall in your direction, to win any championship. I'm a big believer in that. You have to be able to play through whatever duress comes your way.
If you want to fast forward to what we're seeing with the Bruins — and they've got another round left — to get to this point, they've been able to play through injuries, they've been able to find their game. They haven't necessarily gotten the benefit of a lot of calls here through the first three rounds, and not a lot of puck luck through the first two-plus rounds. They started to get a little more of it at the tail end of the Columbus series, but when those things all conspire together, you have an opportunity, and your best players really have to be your best players — that's probably the last thing you'll learn along the way. If all those things happen, then you've got a legitimate chance of winning a championship.
Jaffe: Let's talk broadcasting. Do you get nervous before a game, especially a big game? Do you feel the moment of a high-end playoff game?
Sirott: I don't get nervous. You get excited. You feel the energy in the building. I had this conversation with Zdeno Chara late in the Toronto series, when we started talking about Game 7. He said, "Don't overthink it. Just play your game. You've done this all your life." That was his advice to his teammates as the Bruins were embarking on another Game 7. And there is a lot of truth to that.
My mantra going into games is always the same thing. I do like to feel the emotion of the game. My goal is to be able to translate not only what you are seeing on the ice, but translate the emotion on the ice and also impart some of the stories that we get to encounter across the ice. There's so many great ones. That's one of the things that makes this game the best, in my opinion, in the world.
For me it's the same thing: Let the game come to you, listen to your partner, anticipate — either who's got the puck or what the moment may be or what it may mean. And the last thing, I'm usually pretty emotional on the air. I can get a little charged up, so it's being able to govern your passions and let it come across in the right way during a broadcast. I have a blast during the games. The whole idea is to bring you inside as if all of you are sitting next to Bob Beers and I and we're all watching the game together.
Jaffe: Are there a few people who have more impact than others in terms of influence on your career?
Sirott: There's one or two right off the top. Obviously Doc Emrick. I’ve known Doc a long time. I wrote Doc when I was in high school, and we've had a relationship ever since. I would send him stuff, I would ask for critiques. You're talking about a guy who is an absolute treasure in our business. I've told him many times, two things: One, as Vin Scully was to baseball, Doc Emrick is to the National Hockey League — just an absolute treasure. And the other thing with Doc Emrick is, as good as he is as a broadcaster, he is an even better human being. The way he does the game, the way it comes across, it's just a fabulous listen. I don't try to be like Doc, but you can't help but get an idea of just how he captures the emotion, how poignant he is, how he utilizes the language, how he works with his partner and is such a great fit right now with he and Edzo (Ed Olczyk) — and he's had a lot of great partners over the years — but it's such a great broadcast to listen to.
For me, I was fortunate to spend six years doing the Chicago Cubs, and I got a chance to work with Pat Hughes doing baseball. Getting the opportunity to do Major League Baseball, which is almost the exact opposite of the National Hockey League, where baseball is very little action and a lot of space between the pitches or the hits or the innings, the National Hockey League is reverse, where it's all action and little space between faceoffs. I was always big into prep, but getting the chance to see how Pat handles moments on and off the air, how he prepared every day — and that's a rigorous schedule, it's 162 games, so that's every day. But Pat's use of timing, Pat's use of inflection, how Pat brought stories, how Pat was able to understand, there might be something that you didn't not expect to be talking about, that becomes a topic for an inning or two. ... Pat would always say, "If you ever want to send me an inning, I'm happy to take a listen." I would do it all the time. Even though Pat was in the midst of a 162-game season, which was a bear, the very next day he's come in with three pages of legal pad and we'd go over it immediately. I like to tell people I went undergrad at the University of Michigan and I went to PHU for my graduate degree — Pat Hughes University. He's a master craftsman. He’s going to be in Cooperstown. He’s a Hall of Famer.
Jaffe: You are in the booth for the Boston Bruins now. Finish the sentence: If the Boston Bruins were to win a Stanley Cup, it would mean what to you? What would it mean for you to be in the booth calling the Stanley Cup-winning game for the Boston Bruins?
Sirott: I'll be honest with you here — it's not about me. And that goes back to my broadcasting philosophy. It's not about me. It's about the Bruins, it's about bringing the best out of my partner, it's about me bringing the best out of whoever else we have on the air. I do understand and respect that these moments do not come around all that often. I hear in our open, every time we start a broadcast, all the calls in the past that we have, on record, of the Boston Bruins winning the Stanley Cup title. In recent vintage, that's Dave Goucher, my predecessor, who made a great call; Dan Kelly, who made the call when Bobby Orr scored and went airborne on Mother's Day against the St. Louis Blues. So I hear those all the time. Would it be special to be a part of that group? Yes. But the only thing it means to me is just how fortunate I am to be a part of that and have that opportunity.
I can't stress this enough: What I want to do is to capture a moment that hasn't happened very often in history. To be able to capture it in the right way, for the Boston Bruins, for the Bruins fans, for people who around New England who have loved this team and followed this team for a long time — and even beyond that, because the fan base is pretty big. We travel around the National Hockey League and there are black and gold jerseys everywhere. To be in that position, to be that fortunate, to hopefully capture the moment, I want to make sure it's genuine, make sure it's not pre-planned, make sure it's something from the heart.
