DALLAS — As much as George Costanza may have thought the extent of being a good color man was making “interesting comments during the game,” there’s a lot more that goes into it.

In fact, as many ex-hockey players discover the instant they first walk into a broadcast booth or position themselves between the benches for the first time, the sensory overload can freeze even the most experienced and successful former player.

Being a good color analyst is more than just looking good and having insight.

With an earpiece in, you’re talking and listening to the producer sometimes more than you’re listening to the play-by-play. You’re discussing what replays you want to show, what to illustrate with the telestrator, and, of course, trying to make intelligent, coherent points in 10 to 12 seconds without stepping on your partner.

And you’re doing all this while hoping you don’t miss a thing in the action.

“I did Mark Messier and Chris Chelios’ first-ever game — two of the all-time greatest players — and we took the headsets off after the first period and both of their heads were just spinning,” said longtime ESPN play-by-play guy and studio host Steve Levy. “Like, they had no idea. Imagine how many games those guys had seen on TV and played in, and they couldn’t even get out of the way for a replay. I was laughing my ass off at them.”

Erik Johnson was not one of those people who thought TV broadcasters simply showed up to the rink at 7:08 p.m., put a headset on and started talking from the drop of the puck.

This is a defenseman who went No. 1 in the 2006 draft, played more than 1,000 NHL games and was the first teammate Colorado Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog handed the Stanley Cup to after the then-longest-serving Denver pro athlete won it all in 2022.

But Johnson recalls wanting to be an announcer more than a hockey player while growing up in Minnesota. He idolized play-by-play guys such as Gary Thorne and color analysts such as Bill Clement and Barry Melrose. Whenever his dad, Bruce, flooded their backyard rink in Bloomington, Johnson would announce every play he made on the ice in his head.

Today, freshly removed from an 18-year NHL career, Johnson feels grateful that at just 38, he’s already one of ESPN and ABC’s top national color analysts after barely getting his feet wet doing TV and radio with Altitude Sports in Colorado. He never expected that 365 days after preparing to play in Game 1 of the Avs-Dallas Stars, he would be between the benches back in Dallas calling maybe the NHL’s best first-round playoff series — Minnesota vs. Dallas — on ABC.

Friday night, he’ll be in Salt Lake City calling Game 6 of the Utah-Vegas series with Bob Wischusen on ESPN.

“Erik’s an absolute natural,” said longtime color analyst Ray Ferraro. “I’ve been so impressed how seamless he’s made this transition look, especially the challenge of not getting overwhelmed by all the things that go with just calling the game. … He just stepped right in and made it look easy.

“In Dallas, between the benches, it’s like a phone booth. There’s no room. The Stars’ spare goalie is sitting right at your feet. The visitor’s bench has a little glass door beside you that trainers are constantly going in and out of. There’s a wooden bar between you and the ice to keep you away from leaning over the boards. There’s no place to put your stuff. The tiny monitor — I don’t even know what size it is, but we don’t have a big TV that people are watching from at home.”

That’s why Ferraro was so impressed when, during a Wild coach’s challenge of a penalty called on Brock Faber for shooting the puck over the glass in Game 2 of Wild-Stars, Johnson pointed out that the puck had actually been a deflection because he could see a black puck mark appear on Mavrik Bouque’s stick tape from the deflection.

As Johnson predicted, the penalty call was rescinded.

Despite all of the potential distractions, Johnson says he didn’t find the transition hard.

“Nowadays, you’re on your phone and you’re on your computer and you have the headphones going and you might have a podcast you’re listening to and doing 15 things at the same time, so I didn’t feel overstimulated when I was doing it,” Johnson said moments after interviewing former Avalanche teammate and current Stars winger Mikko Rantanen before Game 2. “It just felt fun. If you’re not having fun, you’re not going to come across as (if) you’re having fun, and no one’s going to have fun listening to you.

“I just had to practice it, and it took less practice than I thought. But it’s been a great transition because I don’t think it would be for everybody, because some people miss the game so much when they retire, and you’re right there between the benches. But it’s been a great transition for me because you stay close to the game, and I don’t miss playing. So it’s been perfect. And I love to travel. You travel, I love hockey and I get to watch hockey.”

On Oct. 24, Levy did the play-by-play for Johnson’s first game on ESPN+ in Buffalo.

“Even in the open, he was good right away,” Levy said. “He makes good, little, subtle points. Really subtle. The other night, he was talking about a faceoff and pointed out right away that as a defenseman, he would have noticed, ‘They have no right-handed shot off the draw, so you don’t have to worry about them going for a one-timer off the draw.’”

Johnson being so good didn’t shock Levy because Levy’s one of the biggest reasons Johnson landed at ESPN so quickly after his playing career ended.

Last summer, when Johnson didn’t sign with an NHL team, Philadelphia Flyers president Keith Jones and general manager Daniel Briere offered him a job in the front office. Johnson considered it but decided to try broadcasting instead. His first gig doing color was during the Avs-University of Denver alumni game last August. Altitude liked him so much that it offered to get him reps doing DU and Air Force college games for a few hundred bucks apiece. He then did studio work and radio for some Avs games.

But Levy remembered how good Johnson was even before that — in 2024 at the first of the now-annual NHL broadcasting camp. The league opens this up to any retired or soon-to-be-retired hockey player who wants to consider broadcasting.

Faculty members include Levy, Kenny Albert, Eddie Olczyk, Brian Boucher, Kathryn Tappen, Jody Shelley and Flyers host and reporter Ashlyn Sullivan. Players are sent homework before they arrive and then over two days at the NHL offices in Manhattan, rotate between doing studio, sideline work and working in a broadcast booth in real TV studios. There are talent scouts there from ESPN, TNT, Sportsnet and NHL Network. Participants are sent home with tapes and notes from the faculty on how to improve.

Chris Wagner and Erik Johnson participate in NHL broadcasting camp in 2024. (Courtesy of the NHL)

Bryan Hardenbergh, the Flyers’ vice president of player engagement and team services, told Johnson about it when he was playing for the team. Johnson had nothing going on that July of 2024, so he figured, “What the heck? Let’s give it a try.”

“We give them a little rehearsal, and then we put them right on the air and always throw them curveballs, like all of a sudden the tape breaks or we’ve got a stall, and I’ve got to ask an extra question they’re not expecting or interrupt to see how they react to breaking news,” Levy said. “Erik was a natural right way, and it’s funny because I thought he’d be good.

“I’m not going to name any names, but there were other players who I thought would be great. And once the red light came on, they weren’t so great. Some of the guys are nervous, which always amazes me because these guys play in front of 20,000 people in the highest-pressure industry, and they’re not nervous then, and yet they’re nervous sitting next to me on a fake TV set.”

Levy and NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told Johnson after broadcasting camp that he’d be good enough to be on national TV whenever he hung up the skates.

“And we were right,” Levy said. “He’s got the sense of humor. He looks good on camera. Keeps opening more buttons on his shirt. He’s got TV hair already. He’s fixed the teeth, which he’s very public about, and he’s a great guy to hang around with all the way to the arena and back from it.”

Some attendees from 2024 and 2025 now working in TV besides Johnson include NHL Network and Amazon Prime’s Michael Del Zotto, Monumental Sports Network and NHL Network’s Devante Smith-Pelly, NHL Network and TSN’s Nate Thompson, MSG’s Cal Clutterbuck and Sportsnet’s Landon Ferraro, Ray’s son.

Recently, Jones, a former player and longtime color analyst before being hired by Philadelphia to run its hockey ops department, texted Johnson, “You’re right where you belong. Don’t do anything else,” an assurance to Johnson that he made the right call turning down the Flyers front office job.

The transition may have been easy for Johnson, but it’s not like he didn’t do his homework.

He studied color analysts he respected, such as Ray Ferraro, Olczyk and Boucher, and he shadowed Ferraro earlier this season in Denver. And he asks a lot of questions, such as what he’s looking for between the benches.

“Ray Ferraro has been huge for me, not only as someone to lean on, but just like how he projects,” Johnson said. “He has such command when he’s on air, I find. So I find I listen to the best guys and pick pieces I like and try and put it into what I do, but I try and just say what I see and what it’s like because let’s face it, there’s not really any color analysts that have played with and against Nathan MacKinnon or Connor McDavid. So I can offer a perspective that not a lot of guys can.”

Erik Johnson interviews former longtime teammate Nathan MacKinnon. (Courtesy of Erik Johnson)

Ferraro was a perfect mentor because he also transitioned quickly, playing the final of his 1,300 NHL games (including playoffs) in May 2002 and working his first game on TV in October 2002.

“He is so curious and so interested in learning and trying to figure out the right way for him,” Ferraro said. “One of the first days we were in Denver, we went out to between the benches and (he) was asking, ‘What are you looking at when the play is on?’ Now, people would think you maybe are following the puck, but that’s not the case. When you’re down low, it’s different because sometimes there’s just these big dudes in the way and you’ve got to look around them and find your lanes to find the puck.”

What amazes Wischusen is how, when that red light goes on, Johnson is the same conversational person he is when they’re sitting together at morning skate.

“It just doesn’t bother him,” Wischusen said. “He just naturally stays the same, which makes him so at ease communicating to an audience. It was Ray who actually told me, before Erik and I worked together for the first time, how good he was, so I went into it expecting it to be a comfortable deal, and right from the start, it was. We’re doing Avalanche games, and especially a game or two where they didn’t play well, and he’s telling the audience what the film session is going to be like with (coach Jared) Bednar the next day. ‘It’s not going to be pleasant, and I know what’s coming.’

“There was a breakout play that he recognized the other night, and during a commercial break, he drew it, and we came back, and he was like, ‘I have seen this and practiced it and drilled it 1,000 times, and they executed it perfectly.’ I mean, I don’t know that there are too many doing this that actually know what it’s like to have Connor McDavid coming at you 100 miles an hour. But 12 months ago, he was living that life.”

Johnson said he does a lot of prep for his broadcasts, but 25 percent of what he preps never hits the air.

“Someone told me, ‘Anyone can memorize a stat, but you played, so talk about what it’s like to be in this situation and tell the viewer how and why because you’ve done it,’” Johnson said. “So I’ve found that I could say, for example, ‘Wyatt Johnston leads the Stars in power-play goals this year. He finds that middle of the ice, you think you might have him covered with a good stick, but he’s so slippery and able to get open that he finds those areas.’ So just like throwing the stat in there, but saying why he’s hard to defend.

“I watch a ton of hockey. Because of this series, I probably watched the last three games the Wild and Stars played toward the end of the season, and over the course of the year, you turn on NHL Network every morning and watch all the highlights, I read all the beat writers’ articles going into a game, listen to their podcasts. If I hear it or see it, I can remember it.”

He can also tap into the relationships he has throughout the NHL. A few weeks ago, for example, he was comfortable enough during an on-bench interview to ask his former Flyers coach John Tortorella, now with the Vegas Golden Knights, why he no longer wears track suits behind the bench.

“Don’t even start,” Torts shot back, smiling. “Are we done?”

 

And when he sat down with MacKinnon before the playoffs, he asked his former teammate about his well-publicized diet and that viral awkward moment at the Olympics when MacKinnon was so clearly perturbed about being handed a stuffed animal along with his silver medal.

“It’s so weird to have a serious conversation with him behind a camera with him holding a microphone in my face,” Rantanen said. “But multiple sources have told me he does a great job, which is amazing because it happened quick.”

Added Bednar, “I think he’s done an amazing job. I think he’s got a great personality for it. I’ve seen him here doing a bunch of our games. He’s got a great demeanor. He understands the game. He understands the players. He knows lots of guys in the league. He’s well-connected. He’s doing a great job.”

Johnson’s having a blast.

“If I go talk to someone that I know and I’m friends with, I’m just going to automatically be more comfortable and get a sound bite that you’re probably not going to get if you don’t know who it is,” Johnson said. “It’s fun because I can kind of bust these guys’ chops a little bit because you’re a peer, or you were. I think my first interview was with Patrick Kane when he broke the record. I’m just like, ‘You just broke the American points all-time record,’ and it hit me: ‘What’s going on? How am I down here doing this interview?’ Just the way it happened was so fast, but like anything, the more you do it, the more you get comfortable. And I really love it.”

Despite his huge collection of suits from his playing days, his wife, Jackie, advised him to get new ones.

“She’s like, ‘If you keep getting great viral interviews, you can’t be in the same suit. You’ve got to have something else on,’” Johnson said, laughing.

And his parents, Bruce and Peggy, are as proud as can be. Well, except when Peggy thought he was really double-fisting margaritas in Dallas last week during a Wild-Stars game.

“She texted, ‘Erik, you can drink on the job?’” Johnson said, laughing. “She was dead serious. I said, ‘It was a joke. There’s no booze in there.’ She’s like, ‘Oh, OK, I was going to say.’ It’s fun because when you’re playing, they watch you playing, but they don’t really see you or hear you. And now they get to see me and hear me a little bit more, and they’re proud.

“I’m so lucky I get to still be part of the game. I love being between the benches. You miss a lot down there compared to the booth, but you also see and hear a lot that you couldn’t hear up there. And it’s fun because I still feel I’m in the action.”

Levy loves this new wave of fresh-off-the-ice analysts. He says T.J. Oshie is a rising star and gets to work with P.K. Subban often in the studio.

“It’s important to stay current,” Levy said. “These guys have stories about going up against the guys currently playing in the NHL, and they know modern coaching and also technology, like the iPad on the bench or whatever — how communication in today’s game has changed. All the modern things that is maybe very different than when Mark Messier was dominating the league, these younger color analysts can add now. It’s nice to have a fresh face. It’s a fresh perspective as well.

“Erik’s been a pleasure and is a major star. He’s the complete package, and he’ll be in sports broadcasting for as long as he wants to.”





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