Remembering Dan Kelly

…was my 1st hockey game. I can remember going to a few games where we all sang “When the Blues Come Marching In.” That was before Gary Bettman came in and started putting the pooch-screw on all of the awesome traditions of the game I love. Clarence Campbell Conference. Prince of Wales Conference. Norris Division. Smythe Division. Adams Division. Patrick Division. Names that meant something. I think that it’s only a matter of time before that shithead bastardizes all of the trophies. Goodbye Conn Smythe. Hello “NHL/Hooters™ playoff MVP.”

I remember when we had to share the Norris Division with the ’Hawks, Red Wings, Jets, ’Leafs, and North Stars (and very briefly Tampa Bay). When that knucklehead Ryan Hollweg boarded Alex Pietrangelo, I longed for the days of Toronto being in the same division as us…

It’s good to hear it and the old school highlights. Hearing Dan Kelly makes me yearn to hear an announcer tell a story unfolding in front of him, instead of the blabbering fools we have now. I’m looking right at you ESPN.(back, back, back, back…)

Youngsters, remember this well…when you hear any of these old guys talk. Be quiet and listen. When you are at a game and you see some punk in a “crosby” sweater (because that’s his favorite player from NHL’09), by all means you have permission to dump you beverage on him. Cuss at him. Make him cry. I was there when the Pens were here last fall. The Fanboys made me sick taking their pictures during the pre-game, drooling on the glass. I was wishing Barc and Bob were out there, giving him the business every shift.

I apologize for the rant, but when I hear the old highlights…it gets the juices flowing.

DK painted the picture of the game perfectly and his knowledge of the game was limitless. In 1968 mom and I fell in love with the Plager Brothers. Mom loved Barc’s heart and I was partial to Bobby beating the shit out of everyone. She bought me a little tape recorder so I could sit in front of the radio or TV and dutifully record the games. Later when mom got home or we were bored I would play back the broadcast and we would dance around the room when “A Drive” and “He shoots, he SCORES!!!” came on. Pop thought we had lost our minds as he would lower the paper and give us the “Please” look.

The other great memory I have of DK was in the fall many times Dad and I would be at hunting camp. This meant tuning on the truck radio or the little radio in the cabin. Having DK relay the game was just like being at the ole barn, you could almost see the big hairy rats running under the stands and smell the popcorn popping.

I got to meet Dan just once at the Dodge dealership in St. Ann. They had this Dodge Boys promotion where the Blues players and management would sign autographs and pics with fans. They had these white cowboy hats on for the promo and my friend and me tried our darndest to steal a hat. I had a 8 1/2" × 11" pack of black & white team player pics signed that day and had them up until a few years and now I can’t find them. Those pics were my most cherished Blues souvenir and it killed me when they went missing. IIRC, DK was in that pack of pics also.

My dad took me (the first of many) during that year and subsequent years. I was 5 years old.
I remember we were walking down the concourse in the old barn and heard my dad say ‘evening Mr Kelly’. He stopped and asked if we were ready for a great game. I guess seeing a man with a little bit of a girl gave him pause. My dad told him this was my first game. He smiled at me and said he hoped it would be the first of many.

My dad’s company had season tickets and hockey wasn’t the most popular sport at the time so he got a lot of tickets.
After he quit that job/divorce/moving out of state occured I didn’t get a chance to go to many games. After I got out of college and got a job I bought season tickets. This continued until Keanan showed up and buying a house interferred.
This began my many years of fanaticism (is that a word?).

My wedding was planned around a Blues game.
We picked a date Nov 20, 1993 that had a home game. I got married late morning, had an afternoon reception and then we (the wedding party) took a limo to the game in our wedding garb. We made national news (CNN, ESPN…)
Here’s the snippet left in the post archive. Of course I have the longer article!

Talk about your diehard fans.
Eight-and-a-half hours after becoming husband and wife, newlyweds Chris and Angela Carroll of Affton attended the Blues’ National Hockey League game against the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday night at The Arena. They sat in Angela’s season seats, Nos. 9 and 10 in Row C of Section 306 in the north loge. Best man Kevin Spohr, maid of honor Carrie Mathes, usher Craig Mayer and friend Ruth Ann Libbert were with them.

You notice Dave Leuking said these are MY season tickets!!!!!

Keep it coming.

How do the two compare and contrast?

Being no older than 21, I’ve never experienced a Dan Kelly game and would like to know how he stacks up compared to the only guy I’ve known.

Want me to suddenly ransack the house for tissue while trying to wipe the wispy glaze from my eyes? Mention Dan Kelly. It sounds cliche, but there simply was no other.

I’ll never forget my late dad telling me why he thought Kelly was so great: “You can get in the car and instantly know the score of the game just by the tone of his voice.”

While that’s a bit extreme, it’s true of him more than any other announcer I’ve ever heard: Kelly was not distracted by irrelevant stories or in-game ads. His focus was on the game, the situation, what it meant in the standings for the Blues to win or lose. Kelly’s vocal tone carried the intensity and stakes of the game. If the Blues were behind close, you could tell by the speed of his words. If they were in trouble protecting a lead, you could tell by the pitch of his voice. If the game was a blowout for either team, you could tell either by his disappointment or the satisfied excitement just in his vocal tone. His mastery of subtle variation told you what he saw in a player or the team at a given moment. (As just one random example, he probably had three or four different pronunciations of “Paslawski” or “Ramage” — all correct yet with different emphases and length — depending on the game situation.)

Nobody tries to do that anymore: There are too many interruptions, on-air ads and distractions to make the broadcast one seamless oratory drama the way Kelly did. (And Gus Kyle was apparently his perfect lighter-side complement.) Too many announcers now try to make everything sound exciting — or else try to tell an old jock story — so there’s no vocal modulation related to the score the way Kelly did it.

I happened to tape a preseason game he did against Detroit off the radio, not long before they announced his cancer. After his death, I made sure to keep it and listen to it each year until it was deteriorating, and I couldn’t bear to listen to a warped version of his voice. I’m sure part of my nostalgia for those days is that my dad and Dan Kelly are who introduced me to hockey. Back then, it was a big deal if ten games were put on TV in one year, so Kelly wasn’t just who you heard in the car in the pinch — he was your conduit to the pulse of the team. If God spoke hockey into the world, he’d borrow Kelly’s voice to do it.

My dad was a clinical, unsentimental academic — yet he went to Kelly’s wake. (It’s hard to describe how uncharacteristic that was: It was joked that he knew Kelly — a man he never met — better than his own children.) It felt so unfair that Kelly died so young. That first year without him was seriously like post-death denial; I kept waiting for him to come back on the air. Part of me still hasn’t recovered, because it was like taking away part of hockey that I can never have back. It’s sappy, but true: Hockey just never felt quite the same after Dan Kelly.