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A new contender for worst broadcaster of all time (Leah Hextall)

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Quid Pro Clowe said:
Not all women’s voices are built the same. Kayte Christensen with the Sacramento Kings has a voice that’s very easy to hear and listen to. This lady just hits pitches that are too high to the point you can’t hear half of what she’s saying.
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Her voice was about the same pitch as the sound of the skates-on-ice whenever the players stop/turn hard. I don't see an easy solution to this problem either, other than maybe adjusting volume levels of the mics, but that will either make people deaf or make the on ice sound too quiet.
 
Chimpradamus said:
Rick Jeanneret. Yes, he's also terrible. Good news though, he's retiring after this season. Also that Tampa radio guy, Mishkin or something. Very, very bad. And then we have Leah Hextall and it doesn't look like she's retiring any time soon.
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Yeah, no, Mishkin is beloved in Tampa. Now as much as I hate to say it, Espo needs to retire.
 
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Watching the game last night--as a Sharks fan--I can actually say she's improved since earlier in the season, though unfortunately in my opinion the level before was so low that I still find it upsetting that she was given this role as her training ground (which I say is on ESPN, and a disrespect they have for hockey still, and NOT on her). It's not like I would turn down such an offer from ESPN, and I probably have more play-by-play experience than she does. People also don't realize just how hard of a job it is, especially hockey.

She did better last night at almost always accurately identifying players and teams--the bare-minimum requirement, particularly on national broadcasts. She also has worked to eliminate her shrieky, incoherent goal calls, but in the process has dialed it back to actually lack enthusiasm.

I agree with @tiburon12 about the lack of anticipation and enthusiasm as play crescendos toward potential excitement. It's a fine line--I thought Doc Emrick actually could go overboard, for example--but it's pretty important with how easy it is these days to be distracted briefly from the action.

Also, I don't know that there's anything she can really do about this--maybe it's just an experience thing--but more than the timbre of her voice, I think the issue is more that she has a very strange way of pronouncing some words. It's like how she ends them, with excessively hard "T" sounds, for example. And she strangely tends to drop articles sometimes (like "the" and "a") and she drops her g's at the ends of words much more than any other play-by-play announcer I've heard in any major professional sport. Personality-wise she's kind of a goofball, which I can get behind, but even my wife, not a hockey fan but who was subjected to part of the broadcast, at one point was like, "Is she joking there?" Again, it's an experience thing.

I wish ESPN would let her get experience by doing college hockey, but more than any other media entity I feel like they do whatever they want with no care for public sentiment, so we'll probably have her calling playoff hockey games.

Also, even though Dominic Moore isn't very experienced or the best himself as an analyst, I'd like to give him some kudos for picking her up multiple times where she seemed distracted or unaware of what was going on and we were left with silence, wondering about things ourselves as viewers.
 
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timorous me said:
Watching the game last night--as a Sharks fan--I can actually say she's improved since earlier in the season, though unfortunately in my opinion the level before was so low that I still find it upsetting that she was given this role as her training ground (which I say is on ESPN, and a disrespect they have for hockey still, and NOT on her). It's not like I would turn down such an offer from ESPN, and I probably have more play-by-play experience than she does. People also don't realize just how hard of a job it is, especially hockey.

She did better last night at almost always accurately identifying players and teams--the bare-minimum requirement, particularly on national broadcasts. She also has worked to eliminate her shrieky, incoherent goal calls, but in the process has dialed it back to actually lack enthusiasm.

I agree with @tiburon12 about the lack of anticipation and enthusiasm as play crescendos toward potential excitement. It's a fine line--I thought Doc Emrick actually could go overboard, for example--but it's pretty important with how easy it is these days to be distracted briefly from the action.

Also, I don't know that there's anything she can really do about this--maybe it's just an experience thing--but more than the timbre of her voice, I think the issue is more that she has a very strange way of pronouncing some words. It's like how she ends them, with excessively hard "T" sounds, for example. And she strangely tends to drop articles sometimes (like "the" and "a") and she drops her g's at the ends of words much more than any other play-by-play announcer I've heard in any major professional sport. Personality-wise she's kind of a goofball, which I can get behind, but even my wife, not a hockey fan but who was subjected to part of the broadcast, at one point was like, "Is she joking there?" Again, it's an experience thing.

I wish ESPN would let her get experience by doing college hockey, but more than any other media entity I feel like they do whatever they want with no care for public sentiment, so we'll probably have her calling playoff hockey games.

Also, even though Dominic Moore isn't very experienced or the best himself as an analyst, I'd like to give him some kudos for picking her up multiple times where she seemed distracted or unaware of what was going on and we were left with silence, wondering about things ourselves as viewers.
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To me, it is not just that she is bad, much of the time she is just sitting there not even saying anything. It is almost like she is calling the game via replay after the game and only calls the moments just before and during goals. She will describe something, then dead air and explain the next thing that happened about 5 plays after it happened. Her voice could be overcome if she was actually good at what she does. I don't know how she got picked with virtually no pbp experience and being Hextall is not that big a leg up, as Hextall isn't exactly a household name.
 
holy said:
They need to make it an option to turn the commentary off on sports and just listen to the crowd noise. These commentators are just too ass.
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Or at least play this in the background as Leah calls the game
 
Sticksandsun said:
I just want to watch these 2 terrible teams play (Arizona-Montreal) and I get even more punishment having to listen to her.
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Just awful along with Pascall-Campbell and Cohn between the benches who basically got paid to watch the game because she added absolutely nothing to the broadcast!!! I liked ESPN coverage back in the day but this time it is hopeless and utterly amateurish.
 
Panthers vs Rangers had AJ Mleczko as a reporter and she was absolutely perfect.
Saw plays the play-by-play initially didn't see (Trouba's defensive play on the breakaway, Spencer Knight not actually seeing the puck yet still making it a great save because he put himself in a good position, the Shesterkin pass that lead to the go ahead goal) and was overall fantastically knowledgeable and most importantly calm and not over the top. The tone of her voice does not stick out and she didn't seem out of place whatsoever.

That being said, I have a hard time imagining her doing pbp and she is top of the line. Why they force Leah Hextall into this role is beyond me, it does a disservice to her. She is NOT a pbp woman, they would do everyone a favor if they reassigned her and stopped trying to pigeon hole her into something she is not set up to succeed in.

Edit: I should add the actual pbp guy in yesterday's game (was it Kenneth Garay?) sounded like buttermilk. The generic type.
 
She is still garbage. Recent Devils game and she is still getting players confused and pronounces players names in a way that makes me cringe. How much time does she get to prepare for a game? You would think she would research or look into how people have pronounced players names before you call a game . Prior Devils game she called Tatar, “ Novak “about 2829 times . She was politely corrected or at least a non subtle attempt to correct her was made a couple of times but it didn’t work.
I still cannot handle her game calling. I don’t think it is possible to even improve enough to be tolerable. That would require a voice box transplant or alteration or maybe a digital voice .And a personality transplant while we are at it. Then maybe.
 
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I’m not really a huge fan of her voice, but she’s no worse than most of the dudes I hear calling games.

Leah Hextall >>>> Jack Edwards and the dogshit that he spews from his talkhole
 
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Any of her highlights posted in this thread? Or is it just more of a constant gruesome torture?
 
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