At the very end of the first period in Friday night’s Canucks/Kings Game 2, Los Angeles captain Dustin Brown scored a shorthanded goal to give the Kings a 1-0 lead. At least, that was obvious to everyone at Rogers Arena except for CBC play by play man Jim Hughson. After a wild scramble in the front of the net, the puck comes to Brown who rifles a shot past Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo and defenseman Chris Tanev. A few things give it away immediately that Brown scores. He raises his arms in the air, the referee points at the net, and Kings players skate away in celebration. Meanwhile, it takes Hughson a good 10 seconds to realize what happened while he thinks Tanev stopped the puck…
“WHAT A SAVE BY TANEV! Oh my goodness, what a save by the defenseman Chris Tanev after a brilliant pokecheck by Roberto Luongo did that puck end up in the net?”
The fact that Hughson makes the above quote one complete sentence is what makes this clip so great. Hughson has a reputation for being a bit of a Canucks homer, so maybe he was just hoping to see Tanev dramatically grab the puck out of mid-air. It’s tough for me to be too hard on Hughson as the voice of one of the games that defined my formative years, NHL 2000. Oh well, it’s not like NBCSN missed Hughson’s call of the next goal to start the second period because they were late coming back from commercial. Wait, they did.
