The Athletic ranks team broadcasts

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14. St. Louis Blues
The Broadcast: FanDuel Sports Network Midwest carries Blues games, with John Kelly on play-by-play and Jamie Rivers on color.

Local score: 4.56 (18th)

National score: 3.05 (12th)

Last season rank: 19

The results: The Blues’ elite former broadcast tandem of Kelly and Pang finished in the top five of these rankings in four consecutive years from 2020 to 2023. They had a special product going for Blues fans, but just two years later, both Pang, who left for a color gig with the Blackhawks for the 2023-24 season, and Kelly, who parted ways with the network in a surprise announcement earlier this month, are gone.

Kelly, the Blues’ TV play-by-play voice for 21 years, is universally adored. We conducted this broadcast survey well before the announcement of his departure, and as you’d expect, the reviews for Kelly were glowing from St. Louis fans.

“Kelly is a national treasure and turns any broadcast into an A+ team. Makes you put up with Bally/FanDuel’s near-unforgivably bad graphics,” wrote one Blues fan.

The Blues will simulcast their games starting next season, using radio play-by-play man Chris Kerber and analyst Joey Vitale as its voices for both television and radio. Kerber and Vitale are well-respected, but we’d expect the Blues’ broadcast to fall dramatically in next year’s rankings because of Kelly’s legendary stature.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/649255 ... mmentator/

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