Chasing the Dream, Finding the Booth | Josh Bogorad

You Nobody would have thought that I would be the one. Ryder sports talk. Baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball, baseball.

Oh, it's a big mic. Oh, okay. All right.

Yeah. Okay. We're going to have a lightning strike, boys.

What happened over there, Grego? We had a little lightning strike right outside the window. All right.

All right. Here's a tip for all these Americano league teams. Don't do it.

You said tip. Yeah, tap, tap. It's a peak.

Keep jamming. To take a colon. Nothing but a big Gen X jerk off.

This is a girl night or what? Oh, somebody would hear that. Oh, shit.

I'm back. I'm just. Hi, hi, boys and girls.

And welcome to another episode of your dark companion. It is fantastic to see you out there today. The only thing is I can't see you.

You can see me. I can't see you. That's how this works.

But I know if I could, I would consider it nothing but fantastic to see you all. Anyway, to have you here, no matter where you are, no matter how, or even when, let alone when you may be consuming this podcast presentation, it is your dark companion. It is the 23rd of February.

This is episode number one, 98. And to, yeah, yeah, 198 of these bad boys. They're all out there for you, man.

It's a beauty. It is. Anyway, Shubi is here.

Ashley is here. And I'm very excited about today's guest because I didn't know him until we had him on the broadcast round table that we did some time back down the road. And that was the first time I got to meet him.

I have since become a big, big fan of his work. And I think we're very, very lucky to have him here in the market doing that thing he does because he is really good at it. And what he does is really, really difficult.

All right, it seems that way to me. He is the television and radio play by play voice of the stars. The great Josh Boagrad.

Oh, look at that. Brian Stakes, bud. That's you, man.

That's unbelievable. Yeah, I think back to when I first got to Dallas. And I got here as the pre-game post-game host on the ticket radio.

Yes. And so I was introduced to the little ticket for the first time. And obviously the hard line would lead in our show most times if we would start at seven o'clock.

And your voice became synonymous with Dallas and the medium in Dallas for me. And so just sitting here, listening to you talk, it's kind of like the opening that I would listen to all the time at 320. And so, yeah, it's great to be here.

It's a treat for me to be sitting here with you. And I appreciate all the kind words. You know, I do remember you coming up to the radio station when you first got the gig.

But they didn't explain to me exactly who you were, what you were doing up there and the thing like that. It's kind of how I got the gig. I just was wandering around aimlessly until they pointed me in front of a microphone.

And I guess things worked out after that. Now you're actually, you were nice, but I knew what I knew that I was, I mean, what was I like tier 731 at the time? Yeah, it was, it was getting introduced to a new city.

It was getting introduced to a new station. Obviously new people. And it was getting introduced to a new position because prior to that, they didn't really have somebody that was doing that full time.

And so, yeah, it was, you were great to me, but I understood that the gig is usually who's this guy running into the studio as I'm packing up all my stuff and trying to get out of here and be traffic on the way home. So. I'm just glad I didn't come off as all putting in some way.

No, I mean, look, you might have been saying some horrible stuff as soon as you got out of the studio about me, but none of it was to my face. No, no, actually, I got it. The card had you punched up.

And I thought, OK, this guy seems to know this thing a little bit. And in subsequent times, I have seen that that is indeed the case. You are really, really good at this, man.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Again, it's very, very cool of you to say and just trying to keep fooling them one show at a time, I guess.

Yeah. For all of us. Let's just start with some basics here because I really know very little about you.

Where did you grow up? Los Angeles. Yeah, I'm an LA kid.

I was born and raised in LA and I was there until I was 18 and then I left to go to college. I knew I wanted to be a play by play broadcaster specifically. I wanted to be a hockey play by play broadcaster, which is really rare at that time in LA.

It's Southern California. It's just, it's not a hockey market. But I was eight years old when Gretzky got traded to the Kings.

And I kind of got, I had found the sport a little bit before that. And then I just got swept up in that wave. And hockey, I'm a huge sports fan across the board.

But hockey became my favorite sport. Yeah. And so I knew I wanted to do hockey play by play.

I had no idea how to go about doing it. It was a very different time. You couldn't just type into Google and find out the best avenue.

I didn't know anybody from that. No, no, not at all. And so I kind of, I stumbled into a few opportunities that I couldn't LA.

I wound up going to college in Arizona and doing as much as I possibly could and just getting whatever experience I could. And then just sort of played hopscotch all over the country, taking whatever the best job at the time was. Which led you where?

The first one I was, I left Tucson as University of Arizona and went back to LA just while I was figuring everything out. And wound up taking a cassette demo reel that I had worked for a couple of games of club hockey, which is, it's not division one, right? It's club sports, but that was the hockey team that they had at University of Arizona.

And I had done a couple of games. I wound up being basically like the ice level reporter for a team my junior year. They were on an ESPN affiliate in Tucson.

They had a play by play guy. They had the program director at the station did color commentary. The play by play guy actually sold appliances, but he was friends with the head coach.

That's what made him the play by play guy. I was the only student there. And I knew they were, they would draw about, you know, 4,000 people, which wasn't bad for a club team.

And then when they would play Arizona State, there would be goalie fights. So they would draw about 6,000 people. And they aired their games on ESPN radio.

I was trying to get in doing whatever I could through the campus radio station, all this sort of stuff. And I remember just calling the ESPN station and saying, hey, my name is Josh. I'm a student at University of Arizona.

I want to be your play by play broadcaster. And they said, well, we have a play by play broadcaster. And they said, okay, then I want to be your color analyst.

And they said, well, we have a color analyst. I said, okay, but I want to be your ice level reporter. And they said, well, we don't have a nice level reporter.

And I said, well, you do now. I work for free. When can I start?

And that's how they made me the ice level reporter. And I got to do that for one season. And as luck would have it, the ACHA, which was the American Collegiate Hockey Association, the club hockey was hosting their national championship tournament in Tucson.

So 12 teams from all around the country came to the Tucson Convention Center. And we decided that we were going to do an internet broadcast of the entire tournament. And so me, the play by play guy in the color analyst, we split up the format of all these games.

They weren't aired on the radio station except for the Arizona one. And the other ones were just streaming online. And those were the first full games that I ever had a chance to call.

I took those, my brother actually recorded the games on a cassette from Los Angeles off the internet. And then I spliced together whatever awful material I could for like a five minute demo tape. And when I graduated from college, I sent that demo tape to every minor league hockey team that I could find.

And the first one to call me back was the Corpus Christi Ice Rays of the Central Hockey League. And I jumped in my two door Toyota Turcell. And I drove from Los Angeles to Corpus Christi.

And I was, I think I had to go to MapQuest first to get directions to find out how to get there. Because I didn't really know where it was and off she went. All right.

Now growing up in Los Angeles, you had options out there. Lots and lots of options. What was it about the game of hockey, the drew you in?

Honestly, it was attending one game, a friend of mine in elementary school. He wound up, his uncle had season tickets. And that's when they played at the forum.

They played the King, sorry. And I honestly wish I could remember when it was. Because I'm not even sure if it was before or after.

I think it was before the Gretzky trade, which was 1988. I was born in 1980. So I'm probably six, seven years old.

I have always loved sports. I put me in an arena in a stadium. I love watching it.

I was the kid that was just scrolling through channels. If beach volleyball was on, like way past my bedtime, I wanted to watch and learn the rules and then figure that out. So there wasn't a sport that I wasn't into.

But going to a hockey game and knowing no rules and not understanding all of it. But just being captivated by the speed of it and the excitement of it and the energy that was in the arena, there was something about it that I was drawn to in a way. I don't want to say that was necessarily more than the other sports because I was drawn to all of them.

But I just remember being in that arena and watching the game and just thinking I want to know more about this. And I want to see more of this. And it wasn't so easy.

It seemed so crazy. If anyone's listening right now that's significantly younger than I am, it's an insane thought that if you wanted to learn about hockey, there was no real avenue to learn about hockey in Los Angeles rather than watching games. And they weren't even all on.

It was kind of similar to a lot of markets at that time. They weren't airing every single game. If you weren't watching them live, you weren't watching them at all.

So I got to just sort of learn the game through the broadcast. And that was cool. If you had tried to do the same thing here, you would have run into exactly the same thing.

Yeah. And I mean, from afar, once I realized you branch out and you learn a lot more and the timing's pretty appropriate for us to be recording this because USA hockey became something that I fell in love with. And again, it was an underdog sport and an underdog group.

And with the, you know, the Kirk Gibson led Dodgers right down the road and the Showtime Lakers right down the road. You know, football was coming and going because it was a weird time with the NFL and the Rams were in Anaheim and then eventually went to St. Louis and the Raiders were up and down from SoCal to Northern California.

And there were other options for what you could watch. And again, I watched all of it. But I kind of, there's something I liked about finding this game that maybe wasn't everybody's number one.

And then realizing that once people were introduced to it, it had a really good chance of turning into one. Because if you like sports, and again, I love them for my money, I can't find a better one than hockey because it has, it checks every box if you're a sports fan. So once you started getting into hockey, if you had had the opportunity to head off into play by play for one of the more traditional sports like those others that you mentioned, you would have taken hockey over that.

Believe it or not, I would have. Now I did those other sports because again, when you're coming up, you're doing whatever you can, right? I mean, you know the drill, you do whatever you can.

So if they wanted me to call women's softball in college and that's what I was doing, if they wanted me to cover the swimming and diving team, then that's what I was doing. If I'm covering the golf beat, then that's what I'm doing. You're learning things on the fly, call arena football, call high school football, call college football, minor league baseball.

You do whatever you can, but hockey was always my number one. Because look, it wasn't the NHL or bus necessarily, but I was chasing a dream. Yeah.

And if you're going to chase a dream, you might as well go after the one that you would want the most. And because hockey was my favorite sport, yeah, that was the dream. Did you have opportunities from maybe another major league team and baseball or basketball or football or anything like that?

I think I got far enough along with hockey that that was probably the route for a major league team. I definitely had opportunities for minor league teams that likely could have changed the route. Because again, you build a resume.

So if you've called 1,000 hockey games, you're going to be a little bit more appealing to a hockey team than necessarily a football team if you've called one football game. I've called more than that, but the point is I started to run down this road and sort of get some traction with hockey where then that became... That was more your specialty and all that.

Yeah, because that's what I've done more than anything else. But I still, even to this day, I don't do it as often. But I love calling the other sports.

I still watch the other sports and I'm still a huge fan. But hockey was always the number one. What other sports are you kind of calling during off seasons now?

So I don't have a steady gig. The Texas High School football game of the week came up with Victory Plus and they needed play-by-play guy. They know I've done that.

I did arena football in the past and a few standout college games here and there. A lot of times there's overlap with what I'm doing with the stars. So if there's a college football game or a high school football game, but it's not...

I don't have a slate of things that I'm doing. You can do anything too. Yeah.

I mean, you can do things if you got a contract with a network before the season started. But once the season starts, we're off and running. Yeah.

Indeed. I have a question on here that says, what if somebody would have told you 10 years ago that you'd be the TV play-by-play boy so the Dallas stars? But it sounds to me like if somebody had told you that, you just said great.

When do I start? Yeah. I mean, I would have said great, but I also probably wouldn't have believed it.

You know, all of a sudden, this is year eight for me. But when I came here, I came here as that ticket pre and post-game host. And so where I was at that point in my career, I had done 10 years of play-by-play broadcasting in the minors.

And I did it primarily in the Central Hockey League. I wound up moving up to Anchorage, Alaska, and doing three years for a team based out of Alaska. They were called the Aces in the ECHL, which is funny, because the ECHL at one point stood for East Coast Hockey League.

And I was in Anchorage, Alaska. So go figure that out. On the far floor.

Yeah, yeah, just a little bit. But I had done all right for a minor league broadcaster. I had gotten some decent recognition in the leagues that I was in.

And won some awards. I had people telling me I was going in the right direction. But then any time an NHL job would come up, I felt like I was no closer to actually getting it.

There was one time in particular that an NHL job came. And just as a really short backstory, the Alaska job was a really great job. Like it was for a minor league job, it was great.

Not all minor league jobs are great. In fact, most of them candidly are not. The Alaska job was so good because we did TV.

And you almost never do TV in the minors, especially not back then. And the team, they flew everywhere because it's Alaska. You're not going to bus.

But I'd rather spend 10 hours on a plane than nine hours on a bus. And I had done a lot of bus trips. And the team was just professional in a way.

That a lot of minor league teams weren't. And we happened to really like the city of Anchorage, the people of Alaska more than we thought. When I first got the job opportunity, I looked at it like a prison sentence.

I was going to go do my time, get what I needed, and get the hell out of there. And we wound up loving it in a way, Ryan said, I can't adequately express. Like it was so fantastic.

The cool things in life is when you run into something like that. Yeah, isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah. And so for me, I was recently engaged at the time. And my wife is a native Texan.

I'm from Southern California. We had only lived in warm weather climates. And then it was just this big flip around.

And I got the job offer. And if I were going to take it, I had to move up there in two and a half weeks. And it was just this crazy situation.

But we loved it. And so the job in Anchorage was good. The life was good.

The friends we made were good. We want a championship up there, which was incredibly cool to be a part of. Everything was going perfect.

And because the job was so good, if you know the minor league rung, the ECHL is kind of considered AA. And then there's a step up that's called the AHL, which is the Cedar Park Texas stars. If you call someone up in the NHL or send someone down, you're going to the American Hockey League.

That's AAA. There's not as much movement as there is in baseball. It's very hard for players to go from AA to the NHL.

It certainly doesn't happen regularly. In baseball, AA tends to be a very developed middle place. Huge.

Where a guy is going to either establish himself as a prospect or not. Yeah. And a lot of times it's just an age thing.

And that's where you are. And the guys in AA might even have a better chance of making it down the road because the AAA players are a little bit older and they've had their time and they've had their look. AAA is where they kind of stashed us now.

Right. Right. And that's hockey is very, very different.

Again, it's not unheard of, but it's certainly not common. And so I think there was a perception that with broadcasters when people were hiring, it was kind of the same. So I would look at these AHL jobs that would open up when I was in Alaska.

And a lot of them, once I found out about them, the broadcasting standpoint, they were worse jobs. They were steps backwards. Yeah.

The organization wasn't as strong, maybe the salary wasn't as strong. There were a lot of things that it was going to be taking a step backwards for my life. They weren't doing TV.

But I found myself when an NHL job opened up, there was one time I called a guy and it was someone that I happened to know through someone else. And we weren't close at all, but at least it was a contact. And I remember asking if I could put my name in for a vacant play-by-play job.

And this was for radio at the time, not for TV. And he just flat out told me, Josh, there's a stack of guys that are in the AHL that I would look at before I looked at you. And I understood where he was coming from.

I'm obviously trying to explain that if you can call a hockey game, I think you can call a hockey game. And I'm here because it's a really good place. So then I started to have this kind of crisis of thought, am I going to have to take a step backwards to take a step forward in other people's perception.

And so when the pre-post game job came along in Dallas, it was an opportunity to just sort of infiltrate the NHL circle. That I had done all these things in the minors. And I had kind of made a decent name for myself.

But what I wanted to do was break down that barrier that at that point I had been unable to. And that was getting anybody in the NHL to have any idea who I was. There's something to be said for getting in with the incorrect.

Yeah. And that's exactly what I was trying to do. So to answer your question, it's a long-winded piece of backstory.

When I got the job, when I first even applied for the job, I flew out to Dallas. We were living in Alaska. And I happened to be vacationing in Texas and I was visiting my wife's family.

And so we planned the interview at the ticket studio with Kat and with Jason Walsh, who at the time was the head of the broadcasting department for the stars. And two people I know well. Yeah.

And two people who were pretty influential in my career. And I didn't know either of them at the time. I got an interview and I remember both of them saying to me, you are a play-by-play guy.

You have been for your entire career. This is not a play-by-play job. And I said, I definitely understand that.

They said, we've had some experience in the past where maybe we've known people who have been play-by-play broadcasters come and take in jobs like this, thinking it's a stepping stone. That is not the case here. In fact, I can guarantee you you will never be the play-by-play broadcaster for the Dallas Stars.

And not so much in a mean way, but in a we want to know before you uproot your life what you're doing and what you're coming here for. So if 10 years ago you would have told me that I was going to be the play-by-play broadcaster maybe like 13 years ago when I first got here, I'd say there's no way because I was specifically told that would not happen. And so it's still kind of crazy to think about how it all worked out.

Well, that brings us around to another thing that I have on here that we might as well. Okay, let's go. Another way your situation is different from a lot of people who do what you do, is that you work with a very tenured and very popular analyst.

Yeah. He's been here since day one. 30 years, right?

Yeah, not quite day one. I think it was 95, 96. Yeah, that's right.

Somebody else was here in that first year. But he was the one that they always had, we were talking about Razor. Sure.

He was the one that they always had their eye on. But for whatever reason, they couldn't get him here in that first year. They had to wait two year or two.

But as I say, he is very popular. He is very unique. He is very tenured.

He is very well connected. And I'm kind of a groupie for the guy. I will admit it.

Yeah. Some might not handle that so well, but you seem totally cool with it. I mean, yeah, what's not to be cool with it.

Because when I wanted to do this, it was hard to find regional play-by-play examples. We talked about how it was a different time. You weren't just flipping on highlights on your phone.

So it wasn't really well known who the regional guys were outside of your market that you happened to live in. And Ralph and Razor kind of transcended that at a time that was very difficult to transcend. So I knew from a distance who Ralph and Razor were because I was fans of their work.

As a fan of hockey and as a fan of broadcasting, I thought they were exceptional. I thought they were exceptional separately and I thought they were exceptional together. When I came here, Ralph was still here.

I did not know that he had any plans on leaving when I came here for the pre-post game job. And then after one season on radio, they wound up moving me into the TV pre-imposed position. And so I did that for four years and then eventually moved in.

So by that point in time, I had gotten to no Razor more than just as a fan on the outside. And look, you laid out the list of things that he is. He's also a Hall of Famer, right?

He's really outstanding at what he does. For my money and for a lot of people, certainly in Dallas, but all over, he's the best color analyst in the game. He's entertaining, he's informative, he's fantastic.

And for me, when I first got here, and I mean here into the position of Play-by-Play, it was such an accumulation of this lifelong trek and dream of where I was. And the fact that I got to share a broadcast booth with what I believed to be the best guy in the league was only just kind of like one more surreal part of the puzzle. So yeah, it was the thing about Razor is that he's really, really good.

But I think he expects everybody that he works with to also care as much as he does. And we never had that conversation. It was never a challenge that was like laid at my feet.

But I come to find out after working with him and before that even listening, that we both kind of approach the game in a similar fashion. I don't like to be a homer. I'm not a homer, but you also can tell who I'm broadcasting towards, right?

And he's very similar to that. I prepare a ton and I really, really try. I think probably by virtue of the fact that most of my career was spent doing games by myself in the minors where you're the pre-game guy, the Play-by-Play guy, the color guy, like the sales guy, the PR guy, the marketing guy.

So I still prepare for games the exact same way. And I think that when I got there, I didn't know what to expect, but the comment that I received that first season that I think I was not expecting as much as I got was that the chemistry with me and Razor seemed pretty instant. And I think it's a testament again to how much we both care and certainly, like, he's very good on the air.

And I knew that I was inheriting a very, very good broadcast. I just, my job was to make sure I just kept it going and then it didn't screw it up, right? And hopefully I have it.

No, no, you would not believe me. But it was still impressive how quick it did feel like you, you know, kind of hit that stride with Razor, you know, going from Ralphie to Dave Strater to you, you know, and Razor even doing Play-by-Play for, was it a season or two season? Yeah, it was basically, too, as Dave got sick.

But just the transition from each of y'all and like the broadcast never really felt like a dip, and then especially when you joined it and within a few games, it felt like y'all had been working together for a long time and y'all just get better every year. Yeah, I don't, again, first of all, thank you. Like, that's still, I don't, it doesn't get old hearing that because you always dream of getting your dream job.

But you don't really dream about what it's going to be like once you do because you hope it goes well. But it, that's not a given, right? It could have, it could have gone sideways.

And I'm very thankful and fortunate that it didn't. I also think that I felt prepared for the moment because of everything I had done. I know that nobody at the time in Dallas knew my background.

They weren't supposed to. So I'm sure there were a lot of people, I was actually told by a lot of people that they were thinking, man, what are you doing? Just moving the pre-game guy over.

That's not going to work. And I understood all of that. I also understood the gravitas of those who had had that position before me.

And again, I'm a huge fan of all of them. So it was more just having a confidence in my ability once I got that chance and working with a guy who's very, very, very good at what he does. And then we found a space.

And I wish I had some kind of answer as to why people felt that way right away. I don't. I'm just, I'm pretty happy that it worked out that way.

And here we are eight years later. That's one of those don't overthink it. Yeah.

Look, Razor was not going to change based on my arrival. And I knew that that was the case. And so it was, it was just me going in.

And as you said, not really trying to do anything other than do what I do and still respect the broadcast as a whole. And I think that that's another commonality that he and I both have. We want to make decisions that are better for the broadcast as a whole.

Yeah. And so, yeah. And I think most of the time, that's what we've done.

And I do think it helped though, you know, being part of the radio and TV pre and post game is you got to know a lot of the people, you know, behind the scenes and radio and TV at, you know, the ticket ended Fox Southwest at the time. And then the people at the arena, because I believe you were doing the pre and post from the arena. Yeah, for the home games.

Yeah, like I first met you when you moved over to Fox and all that. Right. You know, so I think you did have a lot of people, like myself, rooting for you.

And, you know, obviously I didn't have anything to do with your preparation or anything like that. But I think there was that extra a little bit of, oh, hell yeah, Josh is awesome, you know, like we've gotten to know him over four or five years. We want him to succeed.

And I think you had, you know, all the crew that was working the games, you know, at least you had a little bit of that extra push maybe that someone coming in straight off of, you know, the minor leagues, one of that. Yeah, I think that's fair. And you pulled back the curtain too far, because I was going to tell people that you were a hundred percent the preparation guru.

Yeah, that's fair enough. Good for you. You know what, groups, it's amazing because that, and you and I have known each other for a long time now, that is something that we've never talked about, but men a lot, and I felt it a lot, when I did finally get that job.

Because it's as confident as I was, if I'm being totally honest, it's a nerve wracking spot to walk into, especially knowing the level that this broadcast had always been held to, and not wanting to mess that up. And I think that you're right, if I would have gotten that job straight out of Alaska, it would have been all of that coupled with not knowing anybody, and knowing the producer, knowing the director, and knowing the guys in the truck, and knowing the audio guys, and knowing the camera guys, and knowing the A2s, and knowing the stage managers, and knowing the people at the network, and knowing some fans, and knowing people in the front office, and knowing some of the players, the coaching staff, there was a lot of people that I could feel did want me to succeed. And when you get thrown into the deep end in any walk of life, I think it probably helps, if you know that there's some people who are kind of pulling for you, and that doesn't mean that I couldn't have absolutely tanked, and then just burned in flames, like I could have, but it's interesting to hear you say that, because you were one of them, and while you didn't have any direct impact on my preparation, or my first year, my first go-around, I think you and a lot of people who would echo what you just said had a very, very strong, indirect impact, and I think I'll always be forever grateful for all of you who did.

Yeah, because I can at least speak for myself. I hadn't really heard your play-by-play word before you could get over, but like I said, I knew you were a good guy, I knew that you were someone that I loved working with, and whatever capacity would have been happy to keep working with, and seeing you move up to play-by-play, it's like, again, hell yeah, I don't know how it's going to go, from the professional side, I think I can speak for just about anyone that was working with you at that time, it was seriously, let's go. Well, again, thank you, that's, that's very cool.

That happens to people like you, though. Yeah, and make them, that's the key word, like force them, like beat them into submission with it. Yeah, I don't remember.

I don't remember the ultimatium, yeah, the physical ultimatum that I gave you, but I made you look. Yeah, wait, I don't even know how to take that. That's a backhanded compliment.

I don't eat that. But it's a compliment, nothing less. Yeah, I'll take you that, that's how I'm supposed to take it.

I'm still saying you're wrong. Ryan's answered, that's okay. You know, Hockey is a very random, very free-flow game.

And as I'm watching you, listen to you call the game, what I'm thinking of is, how does, how can he tell so quickly, what's important and what's not here, because it all changes, and it all changes in the blink of an eye. It's such an interesting, you know, part of Hockey Play-by-Play, because when you first call games, it doesn't matter how big of a fan you are, like you have to get used to the tempo of the sport that you're calling. And Hockey has just a frenetic pace, and it just goes from different levels of chaos and speed, where offense switches to defense, and back and forth, and turnovers lead to quick scoring opportunities, and you've got to be on the moment.

I think that of all the many things in the minors, when I was first starting out, that were the most important for me to learn, what most people would probably find is a surprising answer. The learning of what not to call was the most important thing, and it only came through repetition. Because when you first get there, you're like, okay, it's my job to describe every single thing that happens.

And very quickly, you'll realize that it's not possible. And if it were, you want to talk about beating the audience over the head. I mean, you'd kill them into submission.

You'd beat them into not liking you. It's the opposite of what I did with groups. I think it was so instrumental, and I don't know exactly when it happened, but I remember my third year, I had a friend in the minors who was another play by play broadcaster.

He was a little older than me, and he said that there is this light bulb moment in season three, where it just all started to just sort of slow down. And I don't remember, I think I'll allow myself to just say that, because it's consistent with the story. I don't know when it was, but I think it's like anything else.

I hear quarterbacks that say, at a certain point, the game just slows down. It doesn't actually, but it just does for you, and you can sort of pick your spots. And that doesn't mean that you're not going to throw an interception that you're not going to make a mistake on the air as a broadcaster.

But the game just starts to slow down, and you watch enough, it's like anything else, where you can tell that, if two defensemen are passing it back to each other, that will give you an opportunity to slide in a useful piece of information, and you don't necessarily need to say that. Or if you are already telling something and providing a little bit of information that isn't exactly play by play, a statistical nugget that's dropped in during play, and then a one-touch pass at center, I spring someone in on a breakaway, you'll just learn how to abandon how it got there and quickly catch up to real time. Because if you try and go back to the beginning, you're chasing at the point that's the apex, and you don't want to be doing that.

You can always go backwards, almost like the way they used to teach you in AP journalism, where you start with the lead, and then kind of bleed down from there, but don't miss the main point. And again, as much as you try, hockey's fast, and it's chaos, and you can get caught, because what looks like a very nothing time, will turn into an outlet pass that hits a referee's skate, and now you're in on a breakaway, and you know, you started, you thought you had five seconds, and it turns out you had 0.5, and you got to pull the shoot and abandon ship and just get back to what you're doing. But learning what not to call, and what would be okay, and maybe just letting the game breathe, was something that I had to do it before I figured that out.

Yeah. One of the things that I've learned about hockey over the years, I'll tell you that right after this, because, sorry, I screwed up there shooting. No, you're doing great.

What I meant to say, before I got into all of that, is number one, this is the great Josh Bogerod with us here today. Is it Bogerod or Bogerod? It's Bogerod, but believe me, I've heard every way imaginable, so I gave up correcting people about 30 years ago.

All right, take two, and three, two, one. This is the great Josh Bogerod here with us today, and we'll have more with Josh momentarily. But right now, do you know what time it is?

It is time for the dreaded and feared mid-show read. Don't be scared Josh. It's really not that bad.

I'm taking your word for it. All right, the teleprompter tells me that stolen water media is making a move after two plus years. It is time for us to change and morph to keep up with you.

Grow with you as we grow. You grow soon. Our video, much like our audio, will be broadcasted to a number of platforms until this migration is complete.

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Is that it? No. All right.

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Get back to Josh Boger out here. I'm really enjoying this, man. It's great to talk to you.

It's great to talk to you. It's great to talk to you. One of the things that I learned about the Game of Hockey when they came here.

And, you know, they're at the ticket. And our fair share of interaction with people in the organization. Is that the people inside it are very, very accommodating.

I didn't think that would necessarily be the case, but I just didn't know any of them, you know? But I found that they were ready to help you out however they can. Is this a Canadian thing or do players and coaches and executives just have a great understanding of what they can do and what they need to do to get the game out there?

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I want to throw the American and the European guys under the bus. I don't know what it is, but there is something there.

Like I said, I've covered other sports and there is a different feel inside hockey. There's just, like you mentioned, there's a feeling that's almost tangible. Yeah.

Yeah. And I feel like I'm butchering a lot of these questions you're asking me because I'm a great, no, no, no, I'm agreeing with you, but I can't explain why. I don't know why that is.

I think, you know, maybe it's that there's sometimes maybe even to the sports marketing detriment. And this is certainly not gospel. This is maybe just a theory.

But there's such a we team mentality more than an eye mentality. And it's almost like beaten into the hockey culture that it's us and it's and, you know, we're recording this a day after the U.S. one gold.

And if you... Which I want to get... Yeah, I would love to.

It was amazing. But if you look at the fallout and the aftermath of that and all the guys talking about each other and look, that happens every championship. You're going to Super Bowl, College Football World Series, like NBA.

You hear the deflection of praise. But it seems like it's just taken to another level. But not every room is the same but a lot of hockey rooms just filled with some really good people.

And I've been fortunate enough to cross paths with quite a few. It's really been neat to watch. Yeah, it is.

It's neat to watch. It's neat to experience. It's neat to be a part of.

And I feel like I have to... I have to kind of add that I'm not... Anytime I say something great about hockey, it's not a derogatory statement towards the other sports because I am a huge fan of all of them.

But there is something that initially attracted me to this game and it wasn't that at all because you didn't know. But then once you get inside of it, you start to see that too. And there's definitely something there that's cool to see up close.

You know, over the years, we did the coaches show. Yeah. And that's where, you know, I got to know some of the people inside the game.

Like Ken Hitchcock, who probably taught me more about the sports consciousness and the sports psychology than any other guy I've ever known has. He was one Lindy Ruff, was another. And, you know, we just had good relations and good interactions with these guys over there.

Yeah. And the stars have had some great personalities roll through here, right? In terms of players and coaches and GMs.

I mean, the stars, that 99 cup winning team, you could do documentaries on the personalities that were in that room. And you look at the history of hockey and Dallas. And there have just been some great people that, if you're going to introduce a new sport to a market that were almost perfect for helping to do that.

I know the relationship that you guys had with the radio station and the team was, was really influential on helping to grow the game. The immediate success that they had was really influential. And then people getting to showcase the personality that you're talking about was also really influential.

Yeah. The stars have always simulcasted on radio and TV. And that alone sets you apart from others in the market who do what you do.

Now, I would think that you knew when you took the gig that that's the way it was going to be because I can't ever remember it being any other way. Yeah, it hasn't. It hasn't?

Yeah. Yeah. It predated me.

And yeah, that was when I talked about the job in Alaska. And them doing TV. They did TV as a simulcast.

So I got to do three years as a simulcast in Alaska. So you came down here knowing how to do this? Yeah.

And again, I didn't come down here to be the play by play broadcaster. But when the sequence of events happened that led me to that role, that was one of the other parts of my career that I could lean on for experience. There is no perfect way to do a simulcast because there's no perfect way to do a broadcast.

There's no perfect way to do strictly a telecast or a radio broadcast. It's a very subjective medium. What you want might be different than what he wants might be different from what they want and just add that to a million.

You can't possibly please everyone because some people you go back to the homework conversation. Some people want you to sound like, you know, your dog died when your team gets scored on. And some people want you to yell at the ref when your team gets a penalty and then other people don't want that.

And if you have that, then how can you possibly please both at the same time? And the answer is, you can't. So what I try and do is call the game the way I would want to hear it as just a general rule of thumb.

And then with the simulcast, if you listen closely, I'll probably give more description on a TV call than some other TV broadcasters. I might tell you that it's the left circle when it is they wouldn't. Yeah.

I might tell you that, you know, it's, I might just drop in that the puck is in the star's defensive zone, which the television audience can pretty clearly see. I try and do enough. I might give the score in the time more than you would if it's just stapled on your screen and a traditional TV broadcast.

But I also try and not do it to the point where again, you're beating your audience over the head with it. And it's finding that sweet spot of probably giving a little bit more than a normal TV play by play and a little bit less than radio play by play, exclusively, but also doing enough to where you can still follow the game and those extra details are in a burden to listen to where you're not jamming too much into your audience. And I think that's another way that Razer and I talked about some of the commonalities that we have and the way we approach the game.

There's with such a subjective medium that I would never be someone that really likes to critique how other things are done, because there's so many right ways to do this. There's not just one. But the way that I like to do it is by keeping the game as the focus and truly the overwhelming focus where Razer and I will have some fun and play off of each other, but then it's very quickly back onto the game.

And you pick your spots on that, but you'll never hear Razer and I spend five minutes talking about something other than what's happening. We won't go off on tangents that last more than a second here there if the opportunity presents itself. And I think that that allows you to pull off the simulcast in a sport like hockey because the play-by-play is really the play-by-play whereas in baseball that's not necessarily the case.

You don't have to call every pitch the same way on TV and on radio. So the game lends itself to be able to do that if you could find a sweet spot and hopefully we do. I think you do.

Well thanks again. I got to tell you though, I've not enjoyed this two-week vacation you've had in the middle of the season. Because I've become a hockey fan and I have missed not having the stars on TV in these last days.

That is why I came here to just personally sit here and kind of break up that mundane two-week break for you. So I'm here to give you the live version, right? I appreciate that.

Did Team USA catch you there? No. But I was very happy to see it.

I told you that, and again, I know people involved with hockey Canada. The people who I love and I want good things for. So it's very different, same with Team Finland.

It, hockey is a small world but I'll tell you where I was when the US won gold. My son had a, both of my boys play hockey and my 10-year-old he had a hockey game that morning. And we were at the rink and we were watching on TV with a bunch of youth hockey players in Dallas.

And adults were there, obviously, but these kids were watching the game and before the goal happened, they were watching and they're chanting USA and some of them were wearing USA jerseys and USA hats. And they're watching this game on a Sunday morning in the Metroplex and hanging on every single play and living and dying with it. And I loved seeing that.

And I loved it. I would have loved seeing it no matter what the result was. But I remember, I was 16 years old in 1996 when the US beat Canada and the World Cup of Hockey.

And the World Cup of Hockey is not the Olympics. But if you were a hockey fan, it was a best on best tournament and these players wanted to win. Mike Madonna was on that team.

There were many, many stars that were on that team. As a kid in Los Angeles, I became a huge fan of so many Dallas stars because they were such a huge part of this, this heyday of USA hockey up to that point. I wasn't around for the miracle on ice.

I was born a month after that happened. And certainly, like no recollection of like growing up in a hockey household because my mom and dad didn't introduce me to the game. So I had to learn about all that stuff retroactively.

But I remember the 96 World Cup. I remember watching those games. I remember being on the edge of my seat.

And I'm a little bit older than my kids are now but watching them and watching that room explode when Jack Hughes scored. And then having the ability and the age that we live in today where you could go online and see all of the bars and all of the living rooms that exploded in the same manner. With kids who were younger than my kids and older than my kids and people who are my age and watching that and having everyone celebrate that and to know that it was the first time since the miracle on ice.

I mean, the first time in my lifetime that the U.S. men won gold in hockey. And that's a crazy thought.

And it's not that they caught me by surprise. Look, it was a one-goal game decided in three on three over time. You play that again and it's a coin flip and Canada could have easily won that.

They could have won it in regulation. The U.S. also could have won it in regulation even though they were out-chance and outshot.

They hit the post on the favor shot that Gensel redirected. I know that was overshadowed by all the Canadian chances. But sitting here next to you as the play-by-play broadcaster of the hockey team in Dallas, Texas and watching the scene at a local rink when that played out in the gold medal game.

And knowing that the only reason I'm sitting here is because I fell in love with the sport because I was introduced to it by a buddy whose uncle had season tickets 40 years ago and I got to go to a game in Los Angeles and then I got to get swept up in moments, like Gretzky getting traded to L.A. and then going to the Stanley Cup final in 1993 and the World Cup USA team in 1996. And the only reason I'm here is because the broadcast taught me the sport in Los Angeles and I am a huge fan of anything that can grow this game.

Because I truly believe it's the best game in the world. And it's worth repeating that that's not as slight at any other sport. My kids play other sports.

We all watch other sports rapidly. I go to arenas and I go to stadiums and I'm fans of other sports passionately. Like it's a huge part of my life.

And there is just simply something about hockey that is so phenomenal. And I think the only thing holding it back is exposure to a certain segment of people. And I think that when Team USA gives you something to root for, I think and I hope that come playoff time.

We're going to have some Dallas stars fans who maybe weren't Dallas stars fans, but can be will be. And they're going to get that introduction that I got all those years ago. And I think that that only happens as an accelerant if USA wins.

And so I love that that moment happened. And I love that my kids forever have their moment of where they were when 2026 gold was struck. I must tell you that when I first found out we were the night where the city woke up the next day and somebody had left a hockey team on the front porch overnight.

Ever since then, I mean, it's taken me a long time, but now I will freely admit I am a fan. Yeah, then I am a fan of the game. The game has drawn me in.

We need more people like that. I never get tired. I think because of where I came from and how I learned the sport, I wasn't born into it.

I didn't have a backyard rink. Like I had to find this sport and just kind of organically develop a love for hockey. And every year since I've gotten to Dallas whether I was hosting or doing play by play, every year people will come up to me in the arena and tell me that this is my first game or you know, this is the first year I've really followed a lot.

And I didn't grow up a fan and now I'm here. And I love that comment so much because I know firsthand what the feeling is like to be introduced to the sport. And it gets you, man.

It does it ever. It does it ever. It gets its hooks into you.

It draws you in. And then the playoffs, look, the stars, they had these three great runs to the conference final. You want to be, you want to be the American Airlines Center for a stars playoff game.

It is, it's epic. It's fantastic. There is not much like it for sure.

Every spring that rolls around and I know this city went a long time, a decade and a half ago, without playoff hockey. And you don't ever take it for granted. And when it comes back, it is, man, it is, I love being in that arena for the playoffs and just soaking it all in because it's the best.

I think the best way to sum up playoff hockey is with a tweet from John Boyz, I believe, with SB Nation from about 10 years ago. It's great. Why watch overtime playoff hockey when you can sort, simply snort cocaine and ride a motorcycle out of a helicopter?

Yep. He nailed it. 10 out of 10.

10 out of 10. And every April, you see that tweet gets circulated, right? And reposted because it's accurate.

And you'll have the end to end. And you know what? You might as well have been riding the same motorcycle on Sunday morning during the US Canada game because that's what it was.

It was, it was game seven with a gold medal on the line and it's the greatest. It really is. It was awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. Josh, thank you, man.

Thank you for doing this. Thanks, right? This was an absolute pleasure.

I really, sincerely appreciate being here. Man, I really, it's been great to get to know you and learn as much as I have about the game of hockey from you, you know? It's just been great having you here and having you as a part of the sports fabric here in our Fairburg.

Thank you. It means, it means a lot that told you the story of how I grew up in the broadcast was pretty influential on me learning the sport. So anytime I hear that, it's, it's not lost on me how, how special it is and what a privilege it is.

So thank you very much. Magnum mistake. You were teaching the game to people out there.

Oh, thank you. And I'm sorry to all the people out there. But thanks a lot, Ryan.

Thanks a lot, Ryan. All right. Josh Bogorod there.

This is your dark companion here. Let's see, do I need to tell anybody anything else or have already done all that? You've done it.

I've done all that. I've done everything that I can possibly do here to tear this thing down and make it a bigger mess than it already is. You have done just about everything.

I have done just about everything. Have a knife. You have.

All right. Well, that is it for us for today. Thank you very much for watching.

We do appreciate that. It is your dark companion. I'm Mike.

Till next time. Bye. All right.

I don't know what to do. Pants off. Your dark companion is a stolen water media presentation.