Jason Kelce is swapping his Monday Night Countdown desk for a seat at ice level.
ESPN announced on Monday that Kelce will serve as a special correspondent for Sunday’s NHL Stadium Series at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, where the Lightning will host the Boston Bruins at 6:30 p.m. ET. The network is positioning him in what it’s calling the “Best Seat in the House,” an ice-level location where he’ll rotate through special guests during the broadcast.
Kelce will be working with the on-site studio crew of Steve Levy, Mark Messier, and P.K. Subban, all of whom are covering the event throughout the weekend. Sean McDonough will handle the play-by-play duties with Ray Ferraro alongside him in the booth, while Kevin Weekes and Emily Kaplan will serve as rinkside reporters.
For Kelce, this gig isn’t as out of left field as it might appear. He grew up playing hockey in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where he scored 21 goals and added 15 assists in 27 games during his senior year at Cleveland Heights High School. Throughout his 13-year career with the Eagles, he frequently showed up at Flyers games — including Philadelphia’s 2018 Stadium Series matchup against the Penguins — and even played in a men’s league game in Jacksonville last October.
On Sunday, he’ll return to the scene where he played his final NFL game — a 32-9 NFC Wild Card playoff loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — but he’ll do in a totally different environment, as the NHL is building the rink inside a 240-foot-long, air-conditioned structure to protect the ice from Tampa’s heat and humidity.
ESPN’s production includes aerial coverage, Skycam, on-ice skatecam, and Mindfly chest cameras on referees, along with mic’d up players and virtual graphics. The network is clearly treating this as a major event, and adding Kelce — who joined ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown in May 2024 and has quickly become one of its most visible personalities— might just get more eyeballs on hockey during a football-less Sunday.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.