Before he takes to the airwaves at the San Jose Arena, Dan Rusanowsky unpacks a booklet of cards that have Sharks players' names and numbers on them. Each card contains condensed information about the respective player, such as his hometown and age.
Photograph by Jeff Kearns
Shark Watch
Despite a serious car accident, Saratogan Dan Rusanowsky is back behind the mic for the San Jose Sharks
By Rebecca Ray
Dan Rusanowsky, the play-by-play radio announcer for the San Jose Sharks, doesn't just love to broadcast Sharks games because he's a hockey nut. Rusanowsky said that broadcasting the games has allowed him to combine sports and creativity. "It really is an art to do what I do," said Rusanowsky, 40, who has lived in Saratoga with his wife, Karen, for the past four years. "Hockey is a very dramatic sport. I love the challenge of painting a picture on the radio for the listener."
Telling the story of what happens during games allows Rusanowsky to use his English degree from St. Lawrence University in New York state. As an announcer, he must write and edit to tell a story, only the deadline is immediate.
His degree alone did not prepare Rusanowsky for a career in broadcasting. He spent all four years at St. Lawrence, plus an additional three years, announcing the play-by-play, or calling, for the university's hockey team. He then earned an master's in business administration from Clarkson University in New York state.
It's his well-rounded education that Rusanowsky credits the most for putting him in the broadcast booth. He majored in English and business, instead of broadcasting, he said. He figured that an employer who wanted to hire a radio announcer would more likely hire a student who could relate well to others, including people from different countries, rather than a student who was proficient in technical skills.
"If you can understand language and people well, you can prepare yourself for almost anything you want," Rusanowsky said.
Photograph by Jeff Kearns
Dan Rusanowsky, left, and 15-year NHL veteran Pete Stemkowski, right, take to the airwaves before the puck drops. Rusanowsky and Stemkowski broadcast their feed of the game live, connecting to KFOX studios a few miles away over an ISDN line.
The odds of getting a radio job, calling the play-by-play for a National Hockey League team, are low. Although there are 30 teams in the NHL--more teams than ever before--that still translates into only about 30 play-by-play radio-announcing jobs. But Rusanowsky has managed to be a mainstay behind the microphone, as the Sharks' only play-by-play radio announcer since the team's first season 10 years ago.
In fact, Rusanowsky was the only member of the Sharks franchise to have witnessed every Sharks game until Nov. 25, 2000. On that day, he was involved in an auto accident on his way to work. He was driving through an intersection, when a car ran a red light and crashed into the driver's side of his 1986 Subaru, caving in the door to within about a foot of the passenger side door.
Rusanowsky was wedged in between the two doors until he was pulled out. An ambulance transported him to San Jose Medical Center, where he spent nine days recovering from a cracked pelvis, a broken left femur, a couple of cracked left ribs, a slight concussion, a partially collapsed left lung and a ruptured diaphragm, which was the most life-threatening of his injuries.
After he was discharged, he walked with a walker, and then a cane. He underwent about five days of physical therapy each week and missed 27 games. He didn't announce Sharks games again until Jan. 15.
Before the accident, Rusanowsky had called 774 consecutive games, including playoff games. But he doesn't care about that as much as he does about being alive. "We'll just have to start another streak and beat the last one," he said.
Although it will probably be about another six months for Rusanowsky to fully recover, his prognosis looks good. Because he has been working out, his slight limp is disappearing, and he is now walking without a cane. He just can't run yet.
"I feel pretty good. I feel very good," he said.
Photograph by Jeff Kearns
About an hour and a half before game time, Dan Rusanowsky hosts a forum for season ticket holders called Ice Insights in the press room at the San Jose Arena. With him are retired former Sharks players Bernie Nicholls, right, and Jamie Baker (partially obscured).
Since Feb. 6, Rusanowsky has traveled with the Sharks and called their road games. And a few weeks ago, he flew to Phoenix to announce the play-by-play action for the Westwood One Network's first NHL Radio Game of the Week between the Phoenix Coyotes and the Colorado Avalanche.
Becoming a broadcaster for the NHL "was the realization of a lifetime dream, so it's been a special privilege to do this job," Rusanowsky said. He had wanted to become an announcer since he was a young New York Rangers fan growing up in Connecticut, listening to most hockey games on the radio because his parents didn't want him to monopolize the TV. He also attended NHL, American Hockey League and college hockey games.
"It's not an easy path. It took me 12 years," said Rusanowsky. He spent five years broadcasting for a minor league team, the New Haven Nighthawks of the AHL, before landing the job with the Sharks. "But I've been here for 10 years, so there's a return for it."
Broadcasting has allowed Rusanowsky to blend hockey, which he played in high school and still plays for fun, with his desire to perform, which he has had since he was a child involved in theater. Rusanowsky still enjoys attending theatrical productions, as well as playing chess, cooking, following current events, reading political books and "anything else that's in print" and watching Formula 1 racing.
Rusanowsky also likes to research his family history. A couple of years ago, he even helped a Mountain View acquaintance, Bruce Black, find his father, Don Gallinger. Gallinger played for the Boston Bruins in the 1940s and had an affair with Black's mother, a Canadian socialite, according to an article in the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal.
Photograph by Jeff Kearns
Drew Remenda, left, the color analyst for the Sharks TV broadcasts on Fox Sports Net, and Dan Rusanowsky, right, talk about the Sharks' 3-0 loss to the Nashville Predators right after the game in the broadcasters' office.
Black's mother put Black up for adoption shortly after he was born in 1947. Gallinger and a former teammate, who were caught betting on the Bruins in 1948, are the only players who have ever been banned from the NHL for life, according to the Journal. Black met his father in Toronto about six months before Gallinger died of a heart attack last year.
"I understood where he was coming from, and I was glad I was able to help," said Rusanowsky, whose grandfather left his mother's family when she was five years old.
But genealogy isn't Rusanowsky's main hobby. Since becoming a broadcaster for the Sharks, following the team has become his "vocation and avocation," he said. Although he enjoyed watching the Rangers win the Stanley Cup in 1994, the Sharks are his No. 1 priority.
On game days, he usually puts in 15 or 16 hours at work, familiarizing himself with players and issues, as well as broadcasting the game and pre-game show. Before he does the pre-game show, he crystallizes as much information as he can, following other games and reading Total Hockey, the official encyclopedia of the NHL.
Even when he eats with his colleagues in the pressroom, he sees it as an opportunity to gain more information and make his broadcasts better and more accurate. "You can get out a more cogent broadcast, and fans can have a more enjoyable experience listening," he said.
When Rusanowsky steps into the broadcast booth before a game, he retrieves a booklet of cards from his "traveling office," a small suitcase on wheels that contains everything he needs to broadcast games. In his "office" are hockey books, media guides, mini-disc players, a computer with phone hookup and emergency equipment in case the ISDN line used for broadcast fails. Each card from the booklet contains a Sharks player's name and number with condensed information, such as the player's hometown and age.
Photograph by Jeff Kearns
At his home in Saratoga, Dan Rusanowsky shows off a jersey given to him by the team during the 1993-94 season.
His colleagues appreciate his organization. "I was a former coach with no broadcasting experience whatsoever, and you couldn't ask for a better partner because he comes so prepared," said Drew Remenda, Rusanowsky's former broadcast partner. Remenda is now the color analyst for the Sharks' TV broadcasts. He was an assistant coach for the Sharks during the team's first five years.
Remenda and Rusanowsky complemented each other because he was more laid-back and loosened things up, while Rusanowsky kept things organized, Remenda said.
"He wants to make you better," Remenda added. "Without him, I wouldn't have made it to TV."
Before games, Rusanowsky and his current broadcast partner, color analyst Pete Stemkowski, a 15-year NHL veteran, edit interviews that they conducted with coaches and players beforehand by using a mini-disc player. Rusanowsky and Stemkowski play the interviews during intermissions. After they go off the air, Rusanowsky enters the score into the column he writes, "Rusanowsky's Recap," on the Sharks' website. At home, he finishes writing the column, which contains his observations about the game.
In addition to conducting interviews on nongame days, Rusanowsky watches the Sharks during their practices, follows other games and produces features.
"It's not something you get through. It's something you enjoy getting through," he said about his workday. "It's challenging, it's fun, but it's also a lot of work."
Photograph by Jeff Kearns
Pete Stemkowski, left, the radio color analyst for the Sharks, and Dan Rusanowsky, right, head home after the Sharks get shut out, 3-0, by the Nashville Predators. Rusanowsky drags a small suitcase on wheels behind him that he calls his "traveling office."
Unlike most other NHL radio broadcasters, who just call games, Rusanowsky also maintains contracts with the radio network affiliate stations. He put together the Sharks network with four stations in 1991. "It's exciting, and it's fun, and it makes it a 12-hour day," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, it goes with the territory."
Although Rusanowsky said that it was important to get to know the Sharks players--he even plays golf with some of them during the summer--he tries to maintain a certain degree of separation, as well.
"They like that, and we respect that," he said. "That's more out of respect for them because you could be someone who's always looking to uncover things. That's not our job. That's Geraldo's job."
So far, Rusanowsky has had several great memories as a broadcaster--among them, calling the game when the eighth-seed Sharks beat the No. 1 seed Detroit Red Wings in the first round of the 1994 Stanley Cup playoffs. But, he said, there is no best memory until the team for which one announces wins the Stanley Cup.
"I think he's one of the best in the business," Remenda said. "He's got such a great sense of the history of the game and of radio. There's no doubt in my mind he's going to end up in the Hockey Hall of Fame as a broadcaster."
Saratoga, California Since 1955
