NBC hockey announcer Doc Emrick is one of the best in the business. In fact, if you go by the preferred metric around here, he is the best play by play man in sports. One of the elements of Doc's announcing that makes him a Hall of Famer is his wide range of vocabulary use. NBC smartly paid tribute to Doc's oral aptitude by releasing a remarkable list of all the different words Emrick used to describe the action of the puck during Game 1 of the Red Wings-Blackhawks series. In all, Doc used over 90 (!!!) different descriptors during one hockey game…
Beat, blocked, bounced, brought, came back, careened, carried, chipped, chopped, cleared, controlled, covered, deflected, directed, dragged, dropped, dumped, fed in, fired, flew, flicked, floated, forced, grabbed, handed, handled, held, hoisted, hooked, hunted, intercepted, jabbed, jammed, kept, kicked, knocked down, laid, led on, left, lifted, lobbed, nudged, packed, passed, picked off, played, poked, popped, posted, protected, punched, pursued, pushed, rebounded, recovered, redirected, re-gathered, rescued, ricocheted, rifled, rushed, saved, sent, settled on, shaken, shot, shoveled, shuffled, shut down, skipped, slapped, slowed, slung, spun, stashed, steered, stopped, swatted, swept, taken, tangled, thrown, tipped, tossed, trickled, turned over, twisted, walked, went off, wound, and wrapped.
It's an amazing list, but in actuality, it's not a full list because NBC forgot this word that Doc used in the third period…
I think we'll add that to the list as "Elvelatored." Even the greatest wordsmiths get tongue tied every now and then.
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