From NESN:

BOSTON, MA – NESN, New England’s most watched sports network, announced today that Bruins play-by-play announcer Jack Edwards has agreed to a multi-year contract extension with the network. Edwards has teamed up with Bruins color analyst Andy Brickley in the NESN booth since 2005 and is also a regular contributor to NESN’s popular weekly hockey debate and discussion program called The Instigators with Mike Milbury.

 “For the past six years, Jack has been an energetic and important part of NESN’s Bruins hockey coverage,” said Sean McGrail, NESN President and CEO. “We are very happy to extend his contract, and look forward to his passionate presence in the broadcast booth for years to come.”

 Jack Edwards said, “Who has more fun than us? To work with Brick, Naoko, and our NESN production crew is to live the dream. We feed off the energy and passion of Bruins fans across New England and hockey fans all over the world.  We love our work and we love working together. To be part of that, to share the space with people who pour so much of their time and effort into covering this team and this sport, is the pinnacle of my career.” 

A New Hampshire native with over 30 years of sports broadcasting experience, Edwards joined NESN in 2005. Best known for his role as a SportsCenter anchor and NHL play-by-play announcer at ESPN, Edwards has also served as a local sports anchor and as a reporter for ABC’s Wide World of Sports and Winter Olympics coverage. In addition to his work with NESN, Edwards is also a senior partner and executive producer for Fountainhead Production, an independent film and TV production company specializing in HD productions.

Published by Bruce Allen

Automattician.

41 thoughts on “Jack Edwards, NESN Sign Multi-Year Extension”

  1. Good to hear. Maybe I'm in the minority but I like listening to Edwards. Through all his quirks, Edwards is a down and dirty, die-hard Bruins fan. He's one of us. GET UP !!!

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    1. You are not alone. Outside of Dennis and Callahan, there are a lot of of us who like Jack.

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  3. I swear I just don't care. The Bruins are a story for maybe 3-4 weeks out of the year. This year the pink hats are coming out in droves because they made it to the conference finals. Yet the regular season ratings for the Bruins were still below the average Bravo Housewife or TLC cake show. Who the Bruins have in the booth effects the ratings not one iota. Whether it is Edwards, who some like and some hate, or Dale Arnold, or any other North American hockey aficionado no one cares because outside of this once every 20 year playoff run…the Bruins are a distant fourth in the Boston media market among the 4 teams. Quick cover your eyes and name men 2 local and 2 national hockey writers…can't do it can you. Now do the same with baseball, football and even basketball. Quick cover your eyes and name me the top 4 players on the Tampa Bay Lightning…can't do it…Now try with the NY Jets, or NY Yankees, Miami Heat (The last teams the other Boston teams played in the playoffs). My point is no one cares.

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    1. "the Bruins are a distant fourth in the Boston media market among the 4 teams."

      Must be why, when the Bruins and Celtics played on the SAME NIGHT last week, the Bruins got higher ratings (on Versus, no less!).

      If the Bruins are competitive and the fan base is charged up, Boston IS still a hockey town. The B's have been dormant for so long, people have forgotten that. If the Bruins continue to be successful and competitive as they have been this year in the post-season, those ratings will continue to be high…and the Celtics will soon be the 4th team in, especially if "the era" is coming to an end.

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      1. The Bruins and Celtics never played on the same night during this year's playoffs. As for which team is more popular, it depends on which team is doing better at the time. When both teams were mediocre or bad for a good stretch of the 2000s and 1990s, the average Boston sports fan didn't care about either team. When one team is good, they get the pink hat / bandwagon fans.

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    2. I couldn't agree more. The Broonz have a loyal (god knows why) and extremely vocal fanbase which makes it seem like there's more fans then there actually are.

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    3. Bruins playoff ratings were the same as the Celtics and they have sold out every game since the beginning of calendar year 2010. All of the bandwagon Celtics fans will be jumping off soon into a soft black and gold landing which unfortunately will drive up ticket prices for real fans.

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  4. "no one cares"? more like, YOU don't care. (although you cared enough to go on a mindless,idiotic rant about the subject)

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    1. i don't care either. The Bruins will be irrelevant as soon as their annual choke occurs.

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  6. You missed the point. The ratings, the attention, media coverage other than this month agree with me. I really don't care if Jack Edwards is part of the NESN broadcast team…he neither adds to or detracts from my enjoyment of or lack there of the Bruins. My rant was neither mindless nor idiotic, it was an observation of how far the Bruins have fallen on the Boston sports scene and that even a trip deep into the playoffs does not seem to be changing the perception.

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    1. Sorry, your rant IS mindless, because what "perception" are you talking about — yours? Everyone else around here seems to be full in as the ratings show. If anything this post-season feels like a changing of the guard from the Bruins — now rising, back in the conference finals for the first time in 20 years — and the Celtics, an aging team that looks like it's reached the end of the line and is facing a rocky future. It could be years before the Celtics get back to where they've been over the last few seasons, while the Bruins are poised to keep this going.

      If the Bruins have fully come back as a competitive franchise that is going to contend for the post-season, the trend is only going to continue. You'd best get used to it, because the Bruins fan base has always been there. Now that they have a reason to cheer, the C's will probably fade into that "4th place on the Boston sports scene" you think the Bruins are in right now — which isn't true as the ratings show.

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      2. A couple of things…

        1) I hate basketball more than I hate hockey. So whether the bruins or the Celtics are third in town is pretty irrelevant to me. I generally choose some other type of entertainment over either of them.

        2) The fact that the Bruins going head to head beat the Celtics in one playoff game this year does not negate my point. During the regular season no one watched the Bruins. Their ratings were not that much better than MLS. The NBA for as much as I despise it, if you can't trust the honesty of the officiating than can you really call it a sport, makes far more money than the NHL because they have more fans.

        3) The bruins are a nice story because they are on an upswing. However 1 week after their season ends…no one will care. There will be no hot stove hockey talk, no interest, nothing. By the way…if they get bounced by Tampa…the talk that is for that week will be "Same old Bruins" talk…can't win the big one, Jacobs must go, fire claude…then it will end.

        4) The Celtics are done for the next 5 -8 years. It is impossible to rebuild in the NBA unless you get extremely lucky. So to see a young, full of potential Bruins team getting attention and accolades makes sense. But it still does not mean any one cares one iota about jack Edwards being resigned.

        5) Lastly, I have spent way more time defending what I said than I should have. My "perception" has a lot more truth in it than not. The Bruins are easily the worse run organization on the Boston Sports scene. They have done nothing to earn the rabid fan base they have, They became marginalized over the years because their management (Harry and the Jacobs) were not championship driven. So announcing they resigned an announcer is a non event. No one cares!

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        1. Not surprisingly, the league's biggest markets posted the biggest local TV audiences. Following Pittsburgh, the largest local TV audiences came in Chicago (96,000 average homes on CSN Chicago), Boston (77,000 on NESN), Detroit (76,000 on FS Detroit), Philadelphia (71,000 on CSN Philadelphia) and New York (59,000 for Rangers games on MSG).
          http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/…

          Feel free to produce Revolution tv numbers.

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          1. Total aside…I went looking for the actual rev's numbers and other than a passing reference to a game that did a 2.1 share on a saturday two years ago I could find nothing reported. I know that Neilsen does not "release" numbers to the public but rather they give them to paying customers who then release them but I would have thought that Kraft Sports Group would have let them out once.

            Back to on topic…77,000 homes for a playoff game proves my point. Figure the audience during the season is at best half that and you are talking numbers lower than TLC.

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          3. Eddie…to quote Nuemy…."You're makin' my point". Look I accept that the Bruins during this playoff run have had an upswing. Playoff hockey is a far faster and better game than the dull horrid dying regular season trap crap that we deal with on a day in and day out basis. My point is like gymnastics or track and field or figure skating's Olympic bump the playoffs do the same for hockey. But the reason I looked at the regular season numbers was because I was trying to show that no one cares whether Jack Edwards is the Bruins announcer because other than a deep run into the playoffs…no one cares about Bruins hockey.

            Maybe next year with a dead (read that bad) Celtics team (assuming there is NBA hoops an assumption I am not willing to make) and a young up and coming Bruins team that may or may not be coming off a championship things will change. My prediction…come November no one is watching Hockey. Now if the Jacobs sell the team…well that might be a different story.

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        2. Don't look now but bruins have a waiting list for season tickets.

          For what it's worth, Edwards' big problem is that he thinks he needs to do a radio call when the games are on television.

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    2. The mindless part is 'how far the Bruins have fallen.' Your opinion is not supported by facts (TV ratings, newspaper and television coverage, and radio interest).

      Jack Edwards was noticed because 17.7 % of the tv audience was watching game 7.

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    1. That Minihane punk just keeps getting humiliated. Is he Wolfie's protege or Bradford's? Muttnansky, Minihane, Perrault……………………it ain't workin' Wolfie.

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  8. Good for Jack, good for Bruins fans, and more proof that WEEI's nonstop criticism of Jack's announcing is a product of jealous media types on a station that is quickly falling into the abyss. They essentially created that whole non "issue" themselves, bad themselves look awful (congrats Kirk Minihane!) in the process and if anything seemed to rally the Bruins faithful behind their play by play guy.

    Seriously, most FANS could care less that Edwards went all goofy in a POST-GAME monologue that most viewers had probably tuned out of minutes before — in terms of calling a hockey game, Edwards brings insight and passion. Things that I wish Don Orsillo would do more of — minus Remy Orsillo is an utter bore and it's made watching the Sox games over the last couple of weeks a real challenge (in addition to the team's lackluster play).

    I've seriously been confounded by what EEI has been trying to do with Edwards over the last couple of weeks. I can only assume their bitterness that the Bruins not only have done well this post-season but their ratings are massive and they've been left out in the cold as the station that doesn't care has weighed on their hosts…there's not much other explanation for it.

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    1. "Orsillo is an utter bore"

      Yeah. He's the play-by-play guy. The other guy is the "color" (i.e.- more interesting) guy.

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  9. If you hate Edwards, just hope we get to watch the Vs. crew from Game 2 – it felt like I was watching the Flyers' local telecast – their first question of Thomas after he stands on his head and steals the game, is wasn't van Riemsdyk awesome.

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  10. Thank the gods I don't like hockey. Just the clips I hear of him on the radio are insufferable. But I can see why the howling (not as large as you think) fanbase likes him.

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    1. I don't get why the non-hockey fan has to belittle the hockey fanbase. A lot of people don't like Edwards schtick. This is my namesake's shtick. Call them all drunks and cavemen. The Bruins core fanbase is the smallest and when they're this deep in the playoffs the interest grows because the pink hats get on board.

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      1. you hit the nail on the head with this line,
        "I don't get why the non-hockey fan has to belittle the hockey fanbase"

        I think Basketball is as boring as watching grass grow but I understand alot of people enjoy it, so good for them. I wouldn't belittle it, to each his own. Yet the non-hockey fans seem to get really ANGRY when the Bruins start making the headlines. Must be a self-esteem thing or something. They sound like young pink-hatters who hopped on the Boston sports scene around the time the Patriots and Red Sox starting winning titles. Sorry kids but do your homework. Boston is one of the best hockey towns in the country. Don't just go by what the numbnuts on WEEI are talking about.

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    2. I too, am not a hockey fan. The guy sounds like a bufoon to me. But obviously a lot of Bruin's fans(I also agree that the fan base is not nearly as large as many would have us believe) like the guy. So along comes a total nobody who someone was stupid enough to put on the radio, and in Felgeresque style makes outrageous remarks to get noticed. This dink should go back to his bubble gum cards. And he should take his buddy Perrault with him.

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  12. Funny that WEEI/D+C, who spend more time discussing politics than anything, bother with Jack. I'm not a Bruins fan but his announcing is top notch. During an exciting game, I want someone into it, not the drivel like D+C put out that makes me think I'm having the WSJ read to me. Why doesn't NESN smart up and broadcast T+R in the morning from SportsHub? I get the Comcast connection, but they are busy showing abroller paid advertisements–maybe time for a change since simulcasting is in?

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    1. Agree – great points. I like the passion Jack brings to games – but he’s not everyone’s cup of tea. For fans like me who only tune in for playoff hockey Edwards is fun. If the regular NHL season ever became relevant then I may not appreciate him as much but he definitely deserves what he’s getting.

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    2. It's been posted by a couple people here that WEEI is bashing Jack Edwards. It's only the Saturday mess with Minihane that I've heard bash him. The Big Show is ridiculing Minihane, Gustin has done a couple of bits trashing Minihane. I haven't heard D&C say anything about it other than to have a laugh at his speeches about Gitchee Goomie and the Rag Tag Farmers. You have to admit those were pretty ridiculous and hard to ignore. For the most part 'EEI has defended Jack Edwards and come down on their Saturday knucklehead.

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  14. Latetodinner—-now there's a sobriquet which implies (perhaps) that you're slow of foot. I would wager you that not a lot of the Bruins' fans are rabid supporters because they delve into franchise economics or such arcana as TV ratings. They're filling the Garden because hockey is, like football, a truly Homeric sport. Perhaps it's not played out "far on the ringing plains of windy Troy" but it's the next best thing.

    Jack Edwards is absolutely the heart and soul of the broadcast team, also.

    Please do not shift from being the last to arrive at this repast to being the last to leave.

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    1. Worry not Fred…I am not going anywhere…and Latetodinner comes from the old expression…you can call me anything just don't call me late to dinner. I am sure you figured that out all by yourself.

      I would take your bet. For years the Bruins the have shed fans going from an installed season ticket base of 15,000 to down to around 10,000. The major complaints being ownerships disregard for the fan. The TV ratings or lack there of have completely bore this out. I know why people should like Hockey but the fact is at best it is a regional sport, barely able to survive in Canada today, and even in a "hotbed" like Boston no one cares. My original point still stands…NESN announced they resigned Jack Edwards. Bruce posted this as news. I mocked the announcement saying no one cares. I also postulated that whether Edwards is calling games or not will not effect ratings. Again not enough people care.

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      1. Sounds like Michael Felger posing as Latetodinner, althought Felger loves the Bruins.

        Wait a minute, I know who this is…. Are you Gary Tanguay, taking out your hate on the Bruins??????

        For someone that doesn't care about Edwards you make alot of comments. Very interesting.

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      2. Obviously, you care enough to make several comments on the topic. Your reading comprehension leaves a little bit to be desired, as 77,000 viewers is the REGULAR SEASON audience. The playoff audience has been much larger.

        I’d also like to know where you get your numbers on Bruins season tickets. The team has never had 15,000 season ticket holders (hell, the old Garden only held 14,448) and it’s capped at about 12,000 which is where they are at now, up from a rumored (per KPD at the Globe) 4,000 in 2007.

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      3. See my post above. Game 7 vs. Montreal was the HIGHEST rated television show of the week in the Boston market with 534,000 viewers. Maybe Jacobs is fudging the numbers, I have no idea.

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  15. During the season I am a casual NHL/ Bs fan, but to me there is NOTHING better then playoff hockey. Unfortunately every year I get roped in only to have the Bs show us a choke. However this year, they've broken out of that mold and deserve tremendous credit for it. So with regards to Jack, I greatly enjoy his commentary, and miss him when the games aren't on NESN. Sure his 'rag tag bunch of farmers' speeches are corny, but they occur when the game is over, or nearly over. It's not as if he endlessly waxing poetic.
    I find Tommy much more difficult to listen to, the Cs never travel/ foul and every missed score is because of a non-call foul on the other team. Jack is high energy & a fan, but at least he calls it like it is.
    just sayin'

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