First of all, we started the day trying to find New Jersey's governor at the time, Christine Whitman, and we basically chased her all over New Jersey. We found her at this hospital event, and we were part of the media, and I asked her a question about the Devils going to Nashville. All of a sudden, everybody in the New York media started interviewing me about why I was there to cover the story. I have brothers and sisters who live in the New York area, and they look up and go, "What the heck is he doing on the news?!"
Next, we went to the Devils' Stanley Cup celebration, and I realized that our WTVF Nashville sticker on the side of my photographer's camera was making people mad. Chris Terreri, the Devils backup goaltender at the time, goes up there and starts cracking on Nashville, and not in a good way, and the crowd started getting a little hostile toward us. Luckily, we got out of there alive, but it was a pretty interesting day to say the least.
I'm glad I made it back to Nashville to see the Preds from the beginning.
I grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, and I was a diehard Boston Bruins fan. I loved hockey. I had moved to Nashville in 1986, so when it became official the Predators would begin playing in the fall of 1998, I was so excited.
I was there at the Expansion Draft in Buffalo, New York, back in 1998, and I remember I did my stand up in front of Niagara Falls talking about the honeymoon the Predators were going to be having with Nashville. I wanted to be involved with this team in any way possible.
I got to know Predators public relations guru Gerry Helper pretty quickly, and I was identified as a guy in the Nashville media who at least knew something about the game. I also got to know Bob Kohl, who is now the senior director of broadcasting for the Preds, and they started asking me to do some radio as the backup radio guy for the scoreboard shows. I did that, and they just kept giving me more and more stuff to do and eventually bumped me up to television on the broadcasts with Fox Sports.
I'll tell you; it was awesome. To be around the game that I loved, to be able to interview players and coaches during the broadcast, sometimes right from the bench, it was a thrill. But it's funny because they were very tolerant of some of my mistakes, and believe me, I made some beauties.