ABC/McDonough Classless With Lemieux Tragedy In Game 1 SCF Broadcast.
Apparently desperate for storylines for the Stanley Cup Final series, the Game 1 broadcast featured several mentions of Claude Lemieux's recent suicide and at the most inappropriate times.
He should fucking know better. They all should. And yet the ESPN producers and top talent leaned into a week-old tragedy as if it were a trivial matter, like just another story or note to get into a telecast.
Sean McDonough showed no class or feel for the subject by attempting to chronicle the events of Claude Lemieux’s suicide and the impact the network believes it’s having on Carolina goaltender Freddie Andersen during play, late in the second period of a 3-3 Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final, and for a long stretch during the action. He reprised the narrative late in the third during play when another player with a connection to Lemieux touched the puck.
What McDonough did, and what the network facilitated and allowed, is among the worst of sports broadcasting’s cardinal sins; leaving the call of the play to chronicle a tragic event and its consequences.
Remember - this isn’t breaking news.
ESPN’s pregame show had a pre-produced piece with Canes goalie Freddie Andersen, who had Lemieux as his agent, fronted by Emily Kaplan. In a pregame piece - maybe. Maybe you mention it and then move on. But it’s also reasonable to ask why they would continue to pester a young man in his first Cup Final who suffered the loss of his agent and good friend the week before.
Forget that this is a very complex story with tentacles reaching places the NHL doesn’t want to go. Lemieux played in the most violent of eras, and, giving as good as he got, was subjected to repeated head trauma and over years and years.
The family has donated his brain to the UNITE Brain Bank at Boston University's CTE Center.
The league is on record that - of course - repeated hits to the head have no correlation to brain damage, and CTE. It’s the tobacco defense, and all sports leagues unabashedly wave those flags of denial.
The story is fresh and hard for Lemieux’s family and friends and all who knew him, and ABC is trading on it without regard for any of them, or, for Claude. Those closest to him and to the family can’t even watch the game - the fucking game - without hearing about it during the play-by-play call.
Put simply - our job is to call the play during play - nothing else - especially during a Stanley Cup Final game. Especially a tied Stanley Cup Final game. You want to try and squeeze in a quick note off topic - maybe - but it better be something you can articulate quickly when the play is soft, and appropriate under the circumstances.
This was neither. I’m embarrassed, and then some, for our profession today.
