As Jack Michaels rests his pipes during this NHL break, it’s hard to believe that he has had the mic for the Edmonton Oilers broadcasts for 15 years since the icon Rod Phillips said his goodbyes.
“It has gone by in a blink of an eye…1,200 games now, it piles up quickly but just a third of the way to what Rod did,” said Michaels, who came from the East Coast Hockey League, to take over from Phillips, who started in the World Hockey Association, then called the first-ever NHL Oilers game at the raucous Chicago Stadium on Oct. 10, 1979.
Phillips is and was a legend, that’s why the Hockey Hall of Famer’s banner hangs from the rafters at Rogers Place alongside the pantheon of other Oilers greats who had their jersey numbers retired.
Difference being: the great radio play-by-play man with his signature “Scooorres!” retired after 3,542 games, calling Gretzky’s epic 50th goal in 39 games against the Flyers, the five Stanley Cup celebrations, the what-just-happened-here Kings’ Miracle on Manchester game in Los Angeles, and they didn’t retire Rod’s mic.
They handed it off to Michaels, who did his first game on Oct. 7, 2010, the night Jordan Eberle scored his dazzling first NHL goal against Calgary, the night Steve MacIntyre obliterated Raitis Ivanans in a fight. There was no pre-game skate for a lap alone like players get on their first NHL night, although Michaels presumably could have done a run around the old press box at Rexall Place.
‘Bit of a lifer’
You don’t replace a legend here, of course, one with the high-end energy of Phillips. You find your own way with the equally energetic Michaels working with Bob Stauffer on radio and Louie DeBrusk on Oilers games on TV, along with some Rogers Sportsnet summer tennis assignments.
Yes, Michaels, the son of a college professor dad Lloyd and a mom Mary, was nervous with his first NHL league call, even doing 919 games in the minors in Colorado Springs, Colo. and Anchorage, AK in the ECHL, two rungs on the ladder below the NHL.
“At some point you’re wondering if this is ever going to happen. I was a bit of a lifer in that league,” he admitted.
“It wasn’t that I thought I couldn’t do this (NHL). It was like a coronation, a capper (after three years in Colorado and eight in Alaska where he did play-by-play, was PR director, travelling team secretary and handled the sale of sponsorship for the Aces’ broadcast),” said Michaels.
He knew he could never replace or replicate Phillips’s great calls with Phillips doing 10 Farewell Tour games during the 2010-2011 to wrap up his fantastic career.
“I knew that, whoever the replacement was. Didn’t matter the credentials of the new guy. Rod’s credentials were 40 times more impressive than mine,” he said.
“I knew that people were thinking ‘who is this guy?’ There was always going to be resistance.”
And rightfully so.
“In the southern United States there’s an old proverb that says when you’re invited to the biggest dance of the year, you dance with who brung you.’ I took that to mean ‘don’t sell yourself to mean you can be as good as this guy.’ Just be yourself’”,” said Michaels.
“Over time, people would see me out in the community. My kids went to school here. I bought a house… I wasn’t going anywhere. And today, I consider myself an honorary Edmontonian.”
Michaels said his son attends the University of Alberta, and his family now has a strong allegiance to Edmonton and Alberta.
While Michaels is a fixture on regular-season Oiler TV games, there’s long been a clamouring for him to get national exposure in playoff series on Sportsnet. But it hasn’t happened. Instead, he moves back to Oiler radio. Does it bug him?
“I’m going to give you a playerish answer. You can only control what you can control. I don’t feel like it’s a demotion to move over to the radio full-time (playoffs). Frankly I feel sorry for Cam (Moon, who does the radio calls when Michaels is doing Oiler TV). I still wear a suit and prepare diligently. Either is good for me. I’m proud of my role in the Oiler organization. I think if you listen to the Oiler playoff games on radio, I don’t think anybody can accuse me of taking a night off. I’m right into it,” he said.
“That said, I’m pretty proud I’ve been able to do some TV games on Hockey Night in Canada (regular-season Saturdays), the first American to do so.”
‘Rejection was part of the game’
Until he got the NHL job though, rejection was his story. Like auditioning for Broadway or going on a Hollywood casting call. He applied for NHL jobs with the Florida Panthers and New York Islanders, talked to the Penguins and the Columbus Blue Jackets and didn’t get any of them.
Did he ever get tired of rejection?
“I knew rejection was part of the game, not unlike my dating life. You had to play the percentages, for every 100, you would get close on a couple,” said Michaels.
“I was never flown there (in person interview) for jobs. So I don’t know how close I was. I never got one, until Edmonton.
“I did get one offer in the American League in Peoria, St. Louis’ farm team. But they were going to pay me $35,000 and I was making triple that in Alaska. I couldn’t take that pay-cut. I had backed myself into a corner. I had a wife (Emily) and two babies (son Tyler, daughter Callie). Going to the American League didn’t make sense,” he said.
It turned out the guy who took the job in Peoria stayed there for one year and then took over for Pete Weber, the former radio voice of the Nashville Predators.
“I thought ‘geez, that didn’t work out so well,” said Michaels.
It was an adventure after he applied for the vacant Oilers gig. He sweated outthe process. He was a long-shot because he’s an American voice and there were scores of interested guys with Canadian passports, plus they had maybe worked higher up in the AHL.
Michaels almost didn’t apply, because it was in a Canadian market.
“I was heading out to Long Island (to see an aunt). On the way to the airport, I thought ‘whaddya doing (not applying for Oilers job)? So I raced back to my place (Anchorage). All I had was a DVD of the ECHL final where (Colorado Avalanche coach) Jared Bednar was the South Carolina coach, (Washington bench boss) Spencer Carbery was the captain of that team and James Reimer was the goaltender,” he said.
“I did have a form letter ready and I took care to spell Allan Watt’s (former Oilers head of broadcast and communications) name correctly on the envelope. It was a different spelling, no Alan or Allen. I had no time to type out a label. Block letters as neat as I could. I chucked it into a mailbox by the airport with all these stamps.”
Michaels waited several weeks for a reply, and finally Watt called him they would like to fly him to Edmonton for an in-person interview.
On his way, right? Not so fast.
“Early in the day they said they had a flight for me and could I come tomorrow? But come night-time and nothing. I go to bed, haven’t packed a bag, and at 5 a.m. I crawled into bed with my son who’s three years old, whose sometimes nervous in bed,” recalled Michaels.
“At 6, my phone buzzes and they tell me I’m leaving Alaska at 7:30 am,” he said, in panic mode.
“I drive up the airport departures and throw my keys to a guy, tell him I’ll explain later, just do what you have to do with my car. I make the flight by eight minutes.”
Michaels, then 35, spent a day in Edmonton for the interview process with the front-office guys Watt, Patrick LaForge, Kevin Lowe, Stew MacDonald and Brad MacGregor.
“Funny thing is I’m at Rexall Place and I run into Derek Laxdal, who had been in the ECHL in Idado, and we both thought ‘what the hell are you doing here?’ Derek was interviewing for the Oil Kings junior head coach job,” said Michaels.
“I did think I might have something (good vibe) going when Stew asked what my biggest success as salesman was in Alaska, selling $1-million in sponsorships.
“I told him we had a Keys to the Game package. But we had a locksmith already (other segment) and you can’t double up. So, I sold it to a funeral home. Stew looks at me and says ‘really?’ I said ‘yeah, Keys to Burying an Opponent.’ He cracked up.”
Michaels didn’t hear from the Oilers for 10 days, and he went to on a family holiday to Hawaii.
“On the plane my wife Emily says ‘hey, get your lower lip up. Don’t ruin this,’ I remember I had sent Allan one of those pathetic emails, ‘just checking in.’ I heard nothing. The morning after we get to Hawaii, Emily and I are in the bar, and we got a couple of big mai tais. And my phone rings,” he said.
Welcome to the Oilers.
“I hung up and bought a round of drinks for everybody at the pool, about $200,” said Michaels, drinking in his good fortune.
This man who graduated from Ithaca College in upstate New York, started out covering the lowest rung of high school football in Pennsylvania at a radio station in Meadville, PA, standing out in the rain, wondering what his degree got him.
He also got a play-by-play gig, calling the Ostrich Handicap race at the Crawford State Fair in Pennsylvania, where Sharon Stone was once Miss Crawford County. He did not say “down the stretch we go” like he does late in Oilers games. He did not end the ostrich race saying “the pleasure was all ours.” His signature sign off on an Oilers hockey broadcast.
“I see these two ostriches at the track, and I say, ‘so what’s the handicap?’ They say they’re going to put our morning news guy Keith, who weighs about 500 pounds, on one of the ostriches. One ostrich takes off like a shot right out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon on a dirt track. There’s a cloud of dust. The other one goes maybe one step and falls over. I’m thinking ‘did we just kill the bird?’ He gets up like he’s had a fifth of vodka.”
Funny times, really starting at the bottom.
But if the road to the NHL was sometimes for the birds for Michaels, he has taken flight as one of hockey’s best voices with his own memorable Oilers play-by-play calls.
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