NESN UPDATE - NESN’s Jack Edwards announces retirement
- Thread starter Fenway
- Start date
I wonder how much longer Brick has left in his career. I’ve met him twice and he’s always a class act and always enjoys talking hockey. I actually had the chance to grab a beer with him at an alumni event. I’d imagine Jack is the same way. Must be hard for him to step away.
Jack Edwards has enjoyed an enviable career. It’s too bad it’s ending this way. - The Boston Globe
Edwards’s passion for the job is as genuine as it is obvious. He has always treated everyone well, with kindness, generosity, and honesty.
www.bostonglobe.com
Jack Edwards has enjoyed the caliber of career one dreams about and yet is so difficult to achieve when setting out into the sports broadcasting business.
Raised in Durham, N.H., he called University of New Hampshire hockey games as a student, when current Bruins broadcast partner Andy Brickley was a record-setting player.
Edwards eventually matriculated from his home state to the Boston market, first at WRKO, then at Chs. 5 and 7 for three years each in the heady ‘80s heyday of local news, before making his way to ESPN and “SportsCenter” and catching that heyday. One of the stories he covered during his Emmy-winning reporting days in Bristol was the death of Celtics star Reggie Lewis in the summer of 1993.
Edwards had already had, by any measure, a successful and fulfilling career when, in September 2005, he landed his dream job as a play-by-play voice for the Bruins, first on road broadcasts, and then for all games in fall 2007.
Nineteen years later, Edwards is so intertwined with the Bruins that it’s easy to overlook his previous sports media life. No matter where you land on his Black-and-Gold-colored approach to calling Bruins games, his talent has long since been proven, and then proven again.
Of course, as he would be the first to tell you, to make it as far as he has also requires luck, and he has had his share. No one — other than the nepotism cases — gets to the top of their profession without it.
But I can’t help but wish, as Edwards’s retirement nears because of a speech problem that remains a mystery to him and his doctors, that he had had just a little more.
Edwards’s passion for the job is as genuine as it is obvious. He has always treated everyone well, with kindness, generosity, and honesty. He will be the last to lament his lousy break, and he’s had an enviable career, but I hope he receives an abundance of empathy and applause in his final shifts as a Bruins broadcaster. (The “Thank You, Jack” sign visible on TD Garden’s electronic billboard is a nice touch.)
Here’s what Edwards told one of my predecessors as sports media columnist, Bill Griffith, in the Sept. 27, 2005, editions of the Globe, under the headline “Edwards, NESN look like good fit”:
“[This is] my dream job,” said Edwards. “Any time something opened at NESN in the past, I’d be in the middle of an ESPN contract, and you just don’t get out of those. Now I just don’t want to mess up this opportunity. My hope is to still be doing this in 2025.”
Almost got there. Getting to do it through 2024 constitutes a heck of a run. It’s just too bad the last year-plus had to be such a challenge for him.
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Faust has impressed
NESN intends to open up the Bruins play-by-play job to applicants, but it would make the most sense to hire former Kings broadcaster and Northeastern grad Alex Faust as Edwards’s successor. Faust, who lost his LA gig when the team condensed its radio and TV broadcasts into one, has filled in to excellent reviews on four Bruins broadcasts this season, but he has continued to freelance elsewhere, too, including on some New York Rangers radio broadcasts and a handful of games on TNT. Sometimes the best hire is the obvious one …
BruinsFanMike82
Registered User
Johnny Upton
Registered User
Forslund would have been a nice get. In an ideal scenario, I’d open the vault for Dave Goucher and get him to come back but by all accounts he loves living in Vegas so probably not happening.
HustleB
Cautiously Optimistic
Faust or Goucher work for me. As long as they don't go off the reservation.
Bruinaura
Resident Cookie Monster
- Mar 29, 2014
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Boy, Jack was really struggling here. 
Brick: I had four brothers, now I have five
Brick: I had four brothers, now I have five
Boy, Jack was really struggling here.
Brick: I had four brothers, now I have five
Jack seemed disappointed. Brick seems legitimately angry with what he just had to watch these last two games. I want uncensored Brickley. Hell, even Raycroft looked like he wanted to punch somebody.
CharasLazyWrister
Registered User
I was always in the middle on Jack. The antics could rub me the wrong the way, but I did like his genuine passion and he had some great calls.
One more thing that he needs to be given credit for. His mental acuity was publicly questioned by many for a while leading up to the official announcement of his exit. That includes from myself. He could have gotten angry about it, and he would have been justified. But he didn’t. He took it with grace, laughed about it, and then announced he was leaving BECAUSE he cared about us Bruins fans and wanted only the best for us when we watched games.
He may be a bit wacky, but I have zero doubt in my mind, despite not knowing him personally, that he is a genuinely good and humble person. And that’s all that I think anyone should be.
One more thing that he needs to be given credit for. His mental acuity was publicly questioned by many for a while leading up to the official announcement of his exit. That includes from myself. He could have gotten angry about it, and he would have been justified. But he didn’t. He took it with grace, laughed about it, and then announced he was leaving BECAUSE he cared about us Bruins fans and wanted only the best for us when we watched games.
He may be a bit wacky, but I have zero doubt in my mind, despite not knowing him personally, that he is a genuinely good and humble person. And that’s all that I think anyone should be.
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22Brad Park
Registered User
Someone forgot the ending quotation mark.
Someone forgot the ending quotation mark.
Oh I doubt he was done speaking
Congrats Jack. Well deserved!!
Congratulations Jack! It isn't the same without him.
I miss him very much.
I miss him very much.
Fire Sweeney
Registered User
Prime Jack was an important part of this team in their golden years. Unfortunately the last few years his broadcasting turned into some embarrassing demented mumbling while the team just turned to shit.
