St. Louis Globe-Democrat

When the Blues and Fox Sports Midwest announced last July that Darren Pang would be the new color analyst for the team’s telecasts, there was only one question asked by all Blues’ fans:

“Don’t they know he was a goalie for the Chicago Blackhawks?”

“Hey, don’t compare my 81-game career in the NHL to Eddie Belfour’s career.” Pang said.

And then two weeks later, the Blues hired Ed Belfour as the goalie coach.

You’ve got to be kidding me!

Who’s next? Al Secord?

“Belfour said to me, “These fans remember every game don’t they? I said, yes.”

Especially the one when you broke your stick while beating the goalposts.

Panger, as he’s known in the hockey world, was that Canadian-born kid who, like all other Canadian boys, wanted to play in the NHL and get his name on Lord Stanley’s cup.

“That was it, (laughs); I was just like any other kid. I just loved getting my skates on. My father was a very good athlete. He was a goaltender too. We always lived near rinks and had a homemade pond in the backyard. I would put equipment on and my neighbors would shoot pucks at me. I was only five or six years old. However, I really wanted to be a goal-scoring forward in the NHL. That’s all I wanted to do was score goals,” said Pang.

Scoring goals would not be in his future. When he was seven, his dad asked if he wanted to be the goalie for his current team, the Nepean Raiders, a team in a town outside of Ottawa. They needed one. He didn’t want to, but put on the equipment and felt the magic that happens.

“You’re like a little puppy dog. Everyone pays attention to you. They skate by and hit your pads or they’re rubbing your head,” said Pang.

The Raiders traveled everywhere in Canada. Two other players on that team also played in the NHL. One was former Blues’ player Dan Quinn. The other was Doug Smith, who played for the L.A. Kings in the early 1980s.

Pang later played hockey in juniors with a guy who, today, is still his good friend. That was NHL Hall of Famer Steve Yzerman.

“When he played, even at 14 years old, you could tell he was going to play pro hockey. Just the things he did on the ice,” said Pang. “We have been friends for the past 35 years.”

Pang received several honors as a goalie in juniors and the minors and made it to the NHL with the Blackhawks. He was so good his rookie season that he made the NHL’s All-Rookie team.

One day, in practice, a teammate fell on his leg and Pang suffered a torn ACL. He had to sit out the year, went through rehabilitation and then tore it again playing tennis on a clay court. He never really felt the Blues – Blackhawks rivalry in the nets for very long.

“In my career, in 1988 in the playoffs, Tony Hrkac scored four goals on me and Hully had some too. That was the first time that I had gotten into a playoff series where I could really feel a rivalry, a real animosity between St. Louis and Chicago fans. I wish I would’ve played longer,” said Pang.

With his playing career over at the age of 27, Bob Pulford, the general manager of the Blackhawks, was very supportive of Pang and recommended that he go into broadcasting.

“I started at the bottom with the Hawks. I did a hotline for them called, “Hawk Talk with Darren Pang.” I would go into the locker room, get interviews and update it three times a day. I worked for WBBM-AM doing the pre-game show, in-between periods and post-game shows,” Pang remembered.

He eventually moved in front of the camera and three years later, got the break that sent him on his way.

“In 1993, I got a phone call. Mitch Rosen, who produced our shows in Chicago, was at a meeting. Word was that ESPN was going to launch a newer, hipper channel called ESPN 2. Rosen said he had a guy for them (me). So I flew to Bristol, Conn., to meet with the people and do a ‘mock’ audition,” said Pang.

And then came the lucky part.

“I called the producer to find out what game I was doing as an audition. It was Detroit at Boston, a game played earlier in the year in late March. I called Steve Yzerman and asked if he remembered that game. He did because he’d scored four goals that night for the Red Wings. He scored early too.

“I get in the studio and the producer, in the head-set, tells us to talk as if it’s a live game. I’ve got a play-by-play guy with me. They asked what we should talk about in the open. I said we should probably talk about Yzerman. Whenever he scores on the road in the first five minutes, they’re 22-1-0,” said Pang.

Yzerman scored early and scored again within the first five minutes. The producer told Pang he was going to call him back.

The network officials were impressed. Pang already had three years of experience and felt comfortable doing that audition. He received a two-year contract with ESPN 2, but from 1993 to 2005, the lockout year, he did every Stanley Cup final game in one way or another. He was interviewing the captain and Conn Smythe Trophy winner. He became a big part of the telecast.

Those were great years for him and the NHL. Whatever city they went to the fans knew it was a big deal. And then there was the lockout of 2004-05. Pang feels that move cost the NHL a lot of momentum.

“I think twice it’s stymied our game. In 1994, when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup, Sports Illustrated had the NHL as “hot”. The ratings were good. The Rangers won for the first time in 54 years. We have a work-stoppage. We get going again and have another work-stoppage for a full year. How do you explain that?”

Coming back from the lockout, it’s sometimes been hard for fans to find a hockey game on television. They went from ESPN to OLN (now Versus). The fans have had to search quite a bit.

“I think that’s where we’ve lost a lot of momentum with the casual fan. They’re starting to get it. It’s taken the fans a long time to figure out what channel it’s on. Once they start searching and clicking down 100 channels, they’ll find something else to watch,” said Pang.

To make matters worse, in St. Louis, Fox Sports Midwest has the rights to show 75 Blues’ games. No other television outlet in this market carries games. The extra games picked up by FSM, from KPLR-TV, aren’t being shown if you have DISHNET satellite television. That dispute is over money for a number of games. And people who have DIRECTV can’t watch the national games on Versus. (Tuesday night’s game against Calgary was not seen in St. Louis because of what is called a, “Versus Exclusive Window.”)

Also, as a result of the lockout, some of the NHL franchises are struggling. The Phoenix Coyotes filed for bankruptcy protection and have been seeking a new buyer. Pang was close to that situation because he was working the team’s telecasts. He began to wonder about his future with that franchise and, later, had an interesting phone conversation with Blues’ president John Davidson, who asked about Pang’s status.

On July 1, he had a complete out of his contract in Phoenix. The club didn’t have a TV contract. They couldn’t give an answer as to what the future was going to hold. Everyone, from the owners to the new potential owners, was telling Pang that if there was something else out there he might want to take it. He called Davidson back and that’s how he got to St. Louis.

“John Davidson’s curiosity with my situation in Phoenix was a big reason why I came to St. Louis. The Blues were looking to add to the telecast, not take away from it. My wife and I love the Midwest. My daughter was already committed to going back to Chicago for high school. She grew up there and didn’t want to finish high school in Phoenix. It was a good fit,” said Pang.

“Knowing that we were coming here made us excited. We knew the ratings were good. We knew there was a passion for hockey in St. Louis. I knew John Kelly (Blues play-by-play announcer). I knew Bernie Federko wasn’t going to get moved anywhere. They were putting him between the benches. They wanted a different feel for the broadcast now that they were going to carry 75 games.”

Pang’s spent almost three months now at his new job and he likes what he sees on the ice in St. Louis…..most of the time.

“They’ve drafted really well,” he said. ‘They got Oshie, Berglund, Perron and Johnson in terms of first-round picks. They still have Ian Cole at Notre Dame. He was a first round pick. Their cupboard is as full as any team’s out there. You could probably move a few players off of this roster, bring up a couple from the American Hockey League and not miss a beat.”

Fans are wondering what is wrong with the Blues these days. They had a good second half last season and that hasn’t carried over to this year, at least at home. In the last five games, (prior to Tuesday night’s against Calgary) they’ve had three wins on the road and two losses at home.

Should they start wearing the white jerseys at Scottrade?

“There’s definitely something missing at home. Should they go to a hotel when they’re at home? A lot of teams used to do that. When I was with the Blackhawks, we used to take the Anthem and play it in the locker room on the road. Someone reported that the Anthem at Chicago Stadium was as good as it gets. We played it so the guys thought they were at home. Most times you see players play well at home and not on the road,” said Pang.

When expectations get high and home fans are disappointed, the first thing that everybody looks at is the coaching. You’ve got to break it down and find out in what areas the team is doing well and in what areas the team is not doing well.

“The staple of a good team is the defense. The Blues penalty killing stats are in the top seven. Their goals-against average is in the top five. Their save percentage is top five. So you look at the coaches and say…their points are getting across,” he said.

The point wasn’t getting across last Friday night, when the Blues blew a three-goal lead giving up five unanswered goals to the Edmonton Oilers. The defense didn’t show up for the final period. There are times the offense isn’t clicking either.

“I don’t know how Andy Murray’s going to do it. Somehow, he has to get more out of his offensive players. David Perron can get so much confidence when he does something well. He’s such a skilled player. And T.J. Oshie is skilled too. What they have to prove is… are they good enough to be top-six guys? And do our top-six guys compete with other team’s top-six guys?

“If your power-play is not going well, which it hasn’t been (ranked 30th in the league), it’s not good, so there are no secrets here. Andy had the power-play last year and has turned it over to his assistant coaches. It is a major issue on home ice because it wins or loses a lot of hockey games. When you have a couple of five-on-threes on home ice and you don’t score, the players get down, the boo’s come out and the players begin to pressure things. They get over-anxious and do things they normally wouldn’t do,” said Pang.

“On the road, no one is booing them. No one is worried about it. You do have more patience on the road. But I do think in the NHL you win a lot of hockey games with the power-play on home ice. That’s the area that the Blues have to figure out and they have to figure it out real quick.”

Does he see himself ever coaching?

“Coaching, no. Managing, yes. I’ve been really lucky the last two years just knowing Steve Yzerman as he builds Team Canada to get ready for the Olympics. Running Team Canada, in my opinion, is the most pressurized job in sports,” said Pang. “We’re on the phone constantly talking about, evaluating and summarizing players. John Davidson made a similar move going from the booth to managing and I think when the time comes for me, I would consider that as well. I coached minor hockey and was a goalie coach at Notre Dame for three years and really enjoyed it. I think at the NHL level, I would not like being a head coach.”

St. Louis has had a lot of great announcers come through on their way to the top. And others, like Jack Buck and Dan Kelly, made it to the top and stayed here. Pang is at the top and has moved here for the season. His family still maintains a house in Phoenix. It’s clear, when you watch his work, that he has a passion for what he does.

“I’ve been at this for 20 years now. I think some people may be surprised that I continue to do this with this much energy at the level that I have,” Pang said. “Everyday I get up and I am excited to go to the rink. Can you imagine your job being to describe games in the NHL? You’re out of hockey at the age of 27. Someone suggests you go into broadcasting. How lucky am I? The first time I got on the air and the red light went on…I loved it. I went home and told my wife that I could do this.”

Pang will be absent from a Blues upcoming telecast Dec. 31. The start time for the game has been moved up an hour to 6 p.m. Federko will by the analyst for that game because Pang will be in Boston, where he will be working the Winter Classic from Fenway Park, on New Year’s Day. For NBC. The game will feature the Boston Bruins playing the Philadelphia Flyers.

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