Color of Hockey: Fuhr enjoys TV, radio analyst role for Kraken AHL team

William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog since 2012. Douglas joined NHL.com in 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, he profiles Hockey Hall of Fame goalie Grant Fuhr, who is a radio and television analyst for Coachella Valley of the American Hockey League, the Seattle Kraken's affiliate, at home games.

PALM DESERT, Calif. --
Grant Fuhr
swore he'd never become a media talking head when he hung up his goalie gear after playing 19 NHL seasons.
"It's definitely not the side that I'm most comfortable with," Fuhr said. "There's a little blue area down there, the goal crease, I'm pretty comfortable there."
But the Hockey Hall of Fame goalie and five-time Stanley Cup champion looks and sounds at home as a radio and television analyst for Coachella Valley, the Seattle Kraken's first-year American Hockey League affiliate.
Fuhr, 60, has traded his goalie mask for a headset and a ritual in-game milkshake on broadcasts with play-by-play announcer Evan Pivnick and intermission and postgame TV spots with host Gino LaMont during home games at Acrisure Arena in Thousand Palms, California.
"I can talk hockey all day, right? I don't have a problem," he said. "I've been around it since I was 4 or 5 years old, so the game I know. All this other stuff, I've had to learn. I actually really enjoy this. It's a great venue, it's fun to see a team start from scratch."
Having Fuhr on the air has been a boon to Coachella Valley, trying to build its fanbase and establish its brand in a desert region unfamiliar with hockey, save the Canadian snowbirds and U.S. Northeast and Midwest winter refugees who call the area their seasonal home.
"I don't have hockey credibility, Evan comes with hockey credibility," said LaMont, who was an anchor and news director for NBC Palm Springs for more than 20 years. "To sit a Stanley Cup champion, a Hockey Hall of Famer, next to me, first broadcast I had instant credibility.

Instantly we were the real deal, not just some local schmos doing it. We got this guy. It's launched us into a different level than any other minor league hockey team."
Coachella Valley will televise 10 home games this season across three local networks - KESQ (ABC), FOX 11 and CW5. All 72 home and away games are heard on 106.9 FM The Eagle and streamed on AHLTV.
"Evan's doing play-by-play in hockey, which is the hardest thing there is to do on television and I'm hosting basically a studio show," LaMont said. "Grant adapts equally to both. One is conversational, the other is reactionary. He seamlessly and almost effortlessly goes from one to the other. He's really quite good at it."
Fuhr brings a wealth of hockey knowledge and history to the broadcasts. He played 868 regular-season games and 150 Stanley Cup Playoff games for the Edmonton Oilers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Buffalo Sabres, Los Angeles Kings, St. Louis Blues and Calgary Flames from 1981-2000.
He won the Stanley Cup with the Oilers in 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1990. He was voted winner of the Vezina Trophy, voted as the best goalie in the NHL, in 1987-88 and was runner-up to Mario Lemieux for the Hart Trophy as League MVP the same season.
Fuhr was 403-295 with 114 ties (829 starts) in his NHL career with a 3.38 goals-against average, .887 save percentage and 25 shutouts. He went 92-50 in the postseason (147 starts) with a 2.92 GAA, .898 save percentage and six shutouts.

Fuhr became the first Black player enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003 and upon entering the Hall joined former Oilers teammate
Wayne Gretzky
(1999). Another former Edmonton teammate,
Mark Messier
, followed in 2007.
Fuhr then followed Gretzky and Messier into broadcasting. Gretzky is studio analyst for the NHL on TNT and Messier has the same role for ESPN's hockey telecasts.
Gretzky ribbed Fuhr about his new vocation when he participated in a ceremonial puck drop at Acrisure Arena on Jan. 22.
"He's like, 'You're actually doing that?'" Fuhr said. "I'm like, 'Yeah.'"
Fuhr said as a former goalie, he offers a different perspective to games than Gretzky, Messier and other retired forwards and defensemen who broadcast local and national games.

"They're all good, they all understand the game," he said. "We all see the game differently. You see a lot of goalies as analysts because we look at the game differently than forwards do. Everything happens in front of us, so we see things a little bit differently."
His analyst's take on the Kraken's top farm team, in second place in the AHL's Pacific Division in their inaugural season under former Pittsburgh Penguins coach Dan Bylsma?
"We've got a nice mix of veteran guys, young guys, they do a little bit of everything," Fuhr said. "They can play ugly games, they can play the high-skill game, it's a great-skating team. Their future is bright, and they're built for the playoffs because they can play any aspect."
Fuhr said he took the minor league broadcast job because Palm Springs, California, has been his home for the past 14 years and it allows him to indulge in his two passions -- hockey and golf.

There are more than 130 golf courses in the Palm Springs area and Fuhr estimates he has played on 100 of them.
When LaMont, a friend and golfing buddy, told Fuhr the Coachella Valley games were going to be locally broadcast, the retired goalie replied, "I'm going to be there anyway, why not get paid?"
"It's in his backyard and it's a chance for him to be involved in hockey and it's on his schedule as well, which I think helps," said Pivnick, who is also Coachella Valley's broadcast and communications director. "Knowing Grant, he still gets the golf in."
Fuhr said he doesn't golf on game days because he's busy preparing notes and doing research on opposing players ahead of the broadcasts.
But he still gets exercise on days when he's on both radio and TV, and must rush down a concourse between periods to get to the TV broadcast spot located a few sections away to join LaMont.
"I don't run that fast," he said with a laugh. "The TV games are more entertaining because I get to run back and forth to try to figure out both and I don't get my milkshake. Radio games, Evan and I have milkshakes."
Photos: Mike Zitek/Coachella Valley Firebirds, Coachella Valley Firebirds