Linda Cohn on journey from goaltending ‘wallflower’ to Kraken star power

Playing against boys as a young hockey goalie gave Linda Cohn inner calm on the ice and then much later in adulthood as a fledgling television broadcaster.

The National Sports Media Hall of Fame anchor for ESPN SportsCenter, unveiled Monday as special host of the new Kraken Hockey Network (KHN), was the only girl in street hockey games, then a youth league near her Long Island, NY home before making her all-boys high school team. A talented tennis player as well, Cohn’s quick reflexes made the goalie position feel natural; with a particular piece of equipment suiting her personality.

“There’s something about being a goalie that I love – the mask,” said Cohn, 64, who’d donned 1970s-style, molded face shields similar to those worn by favorite players Eddie Giacomin and Ken Dryden. “I grew up being a very shy wallflower. And that’s what was great about being a goalie – I could hide behind the mask.”

That hiding served Cohn well by age 15 when – having no girls’ leagues to compete in – she landed in an all-boys circuit with 8-and-9-year-olds to shield her from getting hurt against competition her own age. Bewildered parents chattered in the stands wondering why some girl was “playing with boys they thought I should be babysitting.” But Cohn’s ability to “tune out the noise” while stopping pucks proved invaluable later in life.

“It really helped me become the broadcaster that I am,” Cohn said. “When I broke in at an early age, back when you weren’t seeing women in a man’s world doing sports, my goalie experience of just blocking things out really helped me in my profession that I chose to do.”

That profession, including 32 years as a top ESPN SportsCenter anchor doing a record 5,000-plus shows, owes its origins to a Seattle stint with CBS affiliate KIRO-TV from 1989-1992. In many ways, Cohn’s new Kraken gig, with approximately 15 games of studio work this season, is a somewhat full-circle homecoming.

“Not only did I become a better sports broadcaster in Seattle,” Cohn said, “but it was also the place where this little New York girl learned to enjoy covering high school football games. Being from New York, I grew up loving pro sports. But working in Seattle is where I learned the importance of Friday night football. And the joy and spectacle of covering the Washington Huskies.”

Two seasons ago, while doing NHL contributor work for ESPN alongside her Los Angeles-based 10 p.m. SportsCenter anchoring role, Cohn returned to Seattle to cover a handful of Kraken regular season and playoff games.

“It just seemed so natural to be back there,” she said.

So, Cohn was intrigued when Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke, who she’d known since his days running the Seahawks, raised working for the city’s latest pro team.

“I’m already in on the Kraken are you kidding me?” Cohn said. “I love, love, love the new additions. I love Dan Bylsma. He’s such a great head coach and a great addition. One of my favorite players – and I have a few – is Jared McCann, because he’s just a good human. And Adam Larsson just got extended. Also, Vince Dunn and, of course, Matty Beniers – the whole gang.”

Her KHN duties, behind a Climate Pledge anchor desk in a new Space Needle Lounge location with the rink and arena bowl as a backdrop, will happen off days and vacation time away from SportsCenter.

“We’ve got a Hall of Fame broadcaster joining what’s already an all-star broadcast often touted by fans throughout the league as the NHL’s best,” Kraken president Victor de Bonis said. “Linda has a passion for hockey and a genuine love of the city and we’re looking forward to that excitement shining through for our fans watching at home.”

Beyond reconnecting with Seattle, the host job gives Cohn a toehold in her favorite sport. She’d played college hockey for a women’s club team at SUNY Oswego in upstate New York before graduating with a communications degree in 1981 and starting radio work for a Long Island station.

But she yearned to break into TV, landing a late-1980s news reporting gig at a Long Island cable station. There, she bribed a camera operator by – of all things – baking him cookies so he’d stay late and help her do a pretend sportscast for a demo reel.

“I’m not a great baker,” Cohn said. “But I baked him cookies and so he stayed on an extra 45 minutes.”

Of all the nationwide TV stations she sent the reel to, the only job offer came from KIRO news director John Lippman. So, Cohn and her former husband moved cross-country from New York to a home in Queen Anne so Cohn could work as a sports reporter and weekend sports anchor.

“I liked her attitude from the first,” said Lippman, now acting director for programming of the Voice of America international broadcast company. “She wasn’t timid. She knew hockey especially and other sports in general -- a breadth of expertise we didn’t see much in Seattle. Her delivery was distinctive, and she presented well. I don’t know why others didn’t hire her. I liked what I saw and wish she’d stayed longer.”

At KIRO, Cohn covered high school football, the Mariners, Seahawks, Supersonics, the 1991 Huskies national championship football team, college basketball and even the 1990 Goodwill Games. She also gave birth to her daughter, Sammy, now 33, with Cohn remembering a young Ken Griffey Jr. “rubbing my tummy” at the Kingdome.

“It’s a big reason why I’m doing this,” Cohn said of her KHN role. “Besides the fact that the Kraken are an amazing organization and there’s so much promise with this team, it’s personal for me to be back in Seattle.

“It’s a city that I’ll always love forever because it’s a family connection.”

Cohn also hopes working for the Kraken sparks something she hasn’t felt since her college playing career ended. She last played hockey 12 years ago at Hall of Famer Luc Robitaille’s celebrity charity event in Salt Lake City and misses some of the belonging of being part of a sports team.

“I’ve spent, like, a million years at SportsCenter – well, 32 years and I’m still doing it,” she said. “But here is an opportunity to join a team. A real team, right? Again, it’s for 15 or 18 games, whatever it is. We don’t have the exact number down. But that’s what I’m really excited about as a former goalie. Just missing that team situation.”

While playing for Newfield High School in her Long Island hometown of Selden her senior year in 1977, the once-shy Cohn adopted an aggressive netminding style akin to then-New York Islanders great Billy Smith.

“The boys’ team I was on, they were all for having a girl and they were there to support me,” said Cohn, a backup who started eight of 30 games and did mop-up duty. “And I was the type of goalie that, well, I kind of started trouble because I knew that the guys would come to help me out.

“If anyone got close to my crease, I’d swing a stick. And I knew my teammates would come to my aid, so nobody was going to knock me over.”

The Islanders were the first team Cohn listened to on the radio during their second season in 1973-74. But she “felt bad” for them because of their terrible record while the Rangers – her dad’s preferred team – went to the playoffs.

“I just loved the Rangers after that – there was no turning back,” she said.

Interestingly, the Islanders improved the following season – knocking Cohn’s Rangers out of the playoffs on what was then the fastest overtime goal in NHL history by J.P. Parise 11 seconds in.

The Islanders remained Cup contenders for much of the latter 1970s before launching a four-year championship dynasty in 1980. They were also the first team Cohn covered after graduating college and working in news for WALK-FM radio on Long Island.

She offered to file 45-second reports from Islanders home games if the station paid her gas money to and from Nassau County Coliseum – which it did starting the 1982-83 season of the team’s fourth straight title.

But while covering Islanders’ greats Mike Bossy, Bryan Trottier, Clark Gillies and Denis Potvin up close, the Rangers fan in Cohn was never far behind. In April 1984, the four-time-defending champ Islanders had an opening-round best-of-five playoff against the Rangers. The series went the distance and Game 5 at the Coliseum was a thriller that the visiting Rangers tied 2-2 with 39 seconds to go in regulation when Don Maloney batted the puck out of mid-air and into the net.

Thousands of visiting Rangers fans jubilantly erupted in the stands, as did another working in the pressbox.

“I stood up and it was my inner fandom coming out,” Cohn said. “The Islander fans were in shock and couldn’t believe this was going on. And I couldn’t hide it. My emotion – I was like, ‘Yeah!!!’

“And then I sat back down.”

And the Rangers, as their oft-heartbroken fans know well, quickly lost the series on a Ken Morrow overtime goal.

“That night was the first example of where it was like, ‘Linda, OK, you’ve got to temper your enthusiasm," Cohn said. “But …honestly, I’m proud of that. I am a fan first and all of these years on SportsCenter, I believe that’s been the key to my longevity. That my viewers know that I am one of them.”

But Cohn almost got bounced from ESPN two years in because her bosses believed her off-camera fandom wasn’t translating on-screen. Stunned by the “gut punch” feedback, Cohn worked tirelessly to ensure that same energy from her pressbox eruption years prior now came gushing through in less structured fashion at the anchor desk.

It’s an enthusiasm Cohn hopes to bring to her Kraken work. No more “wallflower” hiding behind a mask.

“I think that is a magical formula, at least for my journey as a woman in a man’s world,” Cohn said. “To let people know that I’m not here doing sports as a just a stepping stone for something else. That I am one of you. I’ll always be a fan.”

The next chapter of Kraken hockey starts now, be part of it. Season Ticket Memberships are available.