The Morning Skate, Sept. 8: Al Murdoch, tennis teaches hockey, Canucks Young Stars get rolling

Happy Back-To-School Day, everyone.

The kids aren’t at the big house for very long today, of course, but it’s the premise, isn’t it?

This week also marks the return of hockey, something 66 per cent of you told me yesterday you were most excited about.

So, with the related announcement late last week that the Canucks are doing a series of Rogers Arena 20th anniversary celebrations – including a night honouring the late, lamented Grizzlies – we turn to PA guy Al Murdoch.

Seriously, get up on your feet.

“I think it was just so exciting from my standpoint, getting the opportunity to sit at centre court…to do what I do,” Murdoch said over the phone on Monday, when asked about his memories of the debut of NBA basketball in Vancouver. “To be a foot away from from the likes of Jordan and Shaq and Kobe, incredible.”

To that point, Murdoch had been mostly a radio guy. He’d done some baseball announcing a few years before, when Major League Baseball played a series of pre-season games at BC Place, but this was his first stint as *the guy*.

He’d been doing afternoons on CKLG AM (not the odd FM version we have now), when he discovered the Grizzlies had already held their open auditions for in-game announcer.

“I was in a panic,” Murdoch recalled. “I thought, ‘I want that job.'”

He put a call into what was then Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment, the company that ran the Canucks, the Grizzlies and the then-GM Place.

“No more auditions,” he was told. Murdoch got Greg von Schottenstein on the phone, the newly-hired game day events coordinator (he’d been with Golden State). “I said, ‘you’ve got to see me.’ I didn’t think he’d say but he did. He saw me the next day. I was a huge basketball fan, I’d played, I knew the players. Two months later I did my first game.”

There was no real prep, he said. It was a trial by fire. There were discussion about how to do intros, about what they wanted to present, of course, and plenty of research, but the first time he sat in the announcer’s chair was for the first exhibition home game at the Garage.

“The difference between radio and games, doing a show on the air, you’ve got control of where the show goes,” he said. “With the nBA, it was all about hype, you’ve got to hype it up. The NHL has gone that way, but it’s different, it’s not as intimate. You’re not feet from the players, you’re still sitting behind boards and glass.”

The basketball job had a unique twist.

“A lot of people were new to the game, I didn’t want to be sombre but I didn’t want to be over the top,” he said. “Greg really left it up to me; ‘what do you want to do? How do you think it should go?'”

Murdoch is now the main man at Rogers Arena, though long-time announcer John Ashbridge still does a game or two a month. Murdoch has known the legendary announcer for years, since he first got into radio. His first job, “literally out of high school” was working at CKNW and CFMI. Working in radio was a dream he’d had since he was six years old.

“It was glued to my ear, hearing these voices through the transistor radio, thinking they were talking to me,” he said. “Radio was my first love.

“I’ve been pretty fortunate with the Canucks. John had a health scare a number of years ago and I got a call to be ready right away,” he recalled. “As we’ve gone down the road, John has decided he wanted to ease off and I said I’d fill in however he wants.”

He’s not in radio any more but has plenty of work doing Canucks and other games and events. He also spends eight or nine hours a day in his home studio, recording voice over work. He’s been a voice actor for 15 years, “I always knew I wanted to do that.”

“The majority of the work is promo work for radio and television stations, everywhere from San Francisco to Regina, to Knoxville, to New York, globally even,” he said. “I do documentaries, I do movies.”

The best part, he said, of working a sports game is getting to be with people.

“I sit in my studio all day and talk to myself, so when I get up with the team at night, there’s nothing better than that,” he explained. “It’s a show, that’s what’s really great about what we do, we got to work with a really good team.”

This summer, Murdoch was on the mic for four rugby games at Swangard Stadium. Two featured Canada, but Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and Japan were also in action – as well as the U.S. That meant a lot of names to learn, fast, and a lot of those names, well have you ever seen a Polynesian name?

“I literally went up to the players and asked ‘how do I say your names’ and I wrote them out phonetically,” he said with a chuckle. “One of the guys from Tonga came up after and said “‘you did a pretty good job all things considered.'”

As for the coming Canucks season, Murdoch said he doesn’t care what the pundits say. “I look forward to every season,” he said. “All these things they’re doing for the 20th, it’s exciting.”

On with your Morning Skate…

The Home Team

Young Stars get rolling this week in Penticton. The latest in my series of prospect previews is Hunter Shinkaruk.

Nice work here from Vancity Buzz’s Omar Rawji, who tracked down former Canucks prospect Prab Rai. Rai shared his thoughts on what being drafted by the Canucks meant and what frustrates him the most about why it didn’t work out.

Beckoning Beck

This is not a good situation for the already-listing Lions.

Travis Lulay, likely out for a month or more.

Now is not the time for John Beck, Ed Willes writes.

You really have to wonder why Wally Buono didn’t have a proper succession plan sooner. Lulay hasn’t been 100 per cent in years. Yes, he was once incredible, but were the odds ever that good he’d make a proper return to form? Doubtful.

Looking at other sports to understand hockey

Can tennis teach us about how to understand hockey? If you look at Roberto Bautista Agut, you may find some answers. Bautista Agut may be the best player you’ve never heard of. He’s the 14th ranked player in the world, and he’s probably never going to make the top 10. The numbers suggest he’s at the top of his game.

Last Lap

Whoops:

Oh, Tom….

Stevie-G: Z-Lister *must* be made as a doco

Interesting news from down under, as the national women’s soccer team is refusing to train over a pay dispute. They’re supposed to tour the U.S.

Fantastic story here from colleague Sue Lazaruk:

This is lightning, defined:

Canada Sevens tickets are on sale today, they’ve shared this promo video to make the occasion:

Happy Birthday, Tony Tanti.