Emotions can run high in the playoffs no matter what the sport. But no announcer expects to get attacked by a fan during a live game broadcast. Except that’s what happened to Abbotsford Canucks announcer Brandon Astle during the second round of the AHL’s Calder Cup playoffs.
The Canucks were leading 2-0 over the Colorado Eagles in the deciding Game 5 of their conference semifinal series. Suddenly, before a center-ice faceoff, Astle was interrupted with a loud banging noise in the background. As he later went on to explain, it was a fan that threw his own chair at him and hit him in the leg.
“Got some yahoo chirping at me from behind. Get out of here! What was he doing? Security! Try that again,” Astle said.
“I’m fired up. He threw my chair at me, hit me right in the back of the leg. Like, what was he doing here? Unreal. Have another beer,” he added.
Astle addressed the bizarre moment in a post on X. In the post, he quote tweeted a video saying that he “could have handled this better.” But honestly, there’s no need to apologize. The fact that he was able to continue a live hockey broadcast while getting hit by a fan with a chair is testament enough to his professionalism. 99% of people probably would have taken the headset off to handle matters or dumped a tidal wave of obscenities on the live broadcast. It at least shocked someone around Astle as you can hear another person say the fan “f—ing slammed it” over his microphone.
I’m not sure what kind of security protocols are in place for AHL announcers, but maybe they might want to consider having someone in the vicinity of the visiting announcers just in case unruly drunk fans attack them with their own chairs. At least for Astle, the Abbortsford Canucks beat the Colorado Eagles 5-0 in their deciding Game 5 to advance to the AHL’s Western Conference Finals in pursuit of the Calder Cup. Hopefully the Texas Stars fans are a little more hospitable in the next round.