ESPN's coverage of Michael Brandsegg-Nygärd's selection took criticism for John Buccigross' comments. ESPN’s coverage of Michael Brandsegg-Nygärd’s selection took criticism for John Buccigross’ comments. (Awful Announcing on X/Twitter.)
ESPNNHLBy Andrew Bucholtz on

Coverage of a league’s entry draft comes with plenty of potential perils, and one of those is with criticism of picks. A stream of “great selection” comments for every pick certainly doesn’t add anything, but particularly going at a specific player can draw its own criticism. And that happened with John Buccigross on ESPN’s 2024 NHL Draft coverage Friday night.

Ahead of the Detroit Red Wings’ first-round pick (15th overall), Buccigross discussed how the team has missed the playoffs for eight straight seasons (with that the second-longest streak in the NHL, behind only the Buffalo Sabres, who they were just talking about with the 14th pick). He then spent significant airtime lobbying for Red Wings’ GM Steve Yzerman to draft U.S National Team Development Program winger Cole Eiserman.

It’s unclear how much of that was a bit based on their names and how much was a serious push for Eiserman, who the New York Islanders wound up selecting 20th overall. However, Buccigross’ desk colleague Emily Kaplan noted that Yzerman had been seen heavily scouting European players this year, and that his first-round draft history often featured them over Americans or Canadians. And the Red Wings did indeed select Michael Brandsegg-Nygärd, the first Norwegian ever taken in the first round of this draft, and that’s when things got strange.

There, Buccigross noted that Brandsegg-Nygärd was the first Norwegian taken in this round. Kaplan then said “What does that tell you about the American, what did I tell you about Steve Yzerman?” And Buccigross responded with “Another year of missing the playoffs!” twice:

That drew blowback. Here’s some of that:

In fairness to the full ESPN coverage, this was followed by a couple of minutes of actual discussion of Brandsegg-Nygärd. That saw Kevin Weekes and Emily Kaplan in particular both praising his physical play and the way he drives the net:

And, as noted, there’s absolutely room for criticism of particular picks on draft broadcasts. But there are sometimes challenges and blowback when that criticism seems to get too personal, or when it’s not matched by grades. And the particular timing and execution of this criticism is a lot of what led to the blowback here.

If Buccigross had waited until after others on the desk talked about this historic moment for a Norwegian player and stated what they liked about the Brandsegg-Nygärd pick, then chimed in with a reasonable and detailed criticism like “He has those strengths, but I believe they should have taken Eiserman instead for reasons X, Y, and Z,” this wouldn’t have gotten much attention. But “another year of missing the playoffs” is harsh (and also likely an outcome that won’t be all or even mostly about who they chose 15th overall; this is a team game), and it’s particularly harsh to drop that immediately after the selection, with that commentary then winding up in videos just about the pick. So it’s understandable why this took some fire.

This was only a small part of ESPN’s opening night draft broadcast. And it’s worth mentioning that it did win praise on other fronts, including broadcasting innovations around the Sphere site. But Buccigross’ commentary on this particular pick didn’t go over well with many.

[Awful Announcing on X/Twitter]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

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