High above the T-Mobile Arena rink, Las Vegas Golden Knights team broadcaster Dan D’Uva absorbed the moment happening down on the ice as alternate team captain and defender Deryk Engelland took the microphone. Engelland spoke directly to the fans about the pain still throbbing from the terrorist attack nine days earlier on Oct. 1 that killed 58 people and injured more than 500 injured in the deadliest mass shooting in modern United States history.

“We are Vegas strong,” Engelland said.

It was minutes before the Golden Knights dropped the puck for the expansion franchise’s first home game, before D’Uva called his first home National Hockey League game, before the old trading outpost in the sand that became the self-proclaimed “Entertainment Capital of the World” had its own major-league sports franchise that might provide a respite, if only for a short time. Listening to Engelland, D’Uva felt inspired. He reached for the game notes.

At the bottom of the page, below the listing of the NHL’s other games that night, he picked up a black pen and scribbled part of a Bruce Springsteen lyric and a note to himself in slanting script: “Strong. Vegas Strong.” Then Engelland skated off, ceding the moment to D’Uva, who now, after living in Las Vegas for five weeks, became the city’s singular voice in a moment of pride and anguish.

“There are tears of sadness,” he said. “There are tears of joy. And there are tears of the kind we just experienced.”

It was this ability to capture a moment, albeit in different circumstances, that told those close to D’Uva that he was ready for the NHL after a five-year play-by-play broadcasting stint with the Syracuse Crunch, the Tampa Bay Lightning’s American Hockey League affiliate. Several mentors, including longtime hockey announcer Doc Emrick, recommended D’Uva for the Golden Knights radio job, which he got in August.

The former Syracuse University student and S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications adjunct professor will call his first game in New York since joining the Golden Knights — now one of the NHL’s best teams at 8-1 — when the team plays at the Islanders on Monday and the Rangers on Tuesday.

“He’s got an ability,” Emrick said of D’Uva. “And it seemed like what he really wanted to do was hockey. There aren’t too many people devoted to (broadcasting) hockey, but he sure had a knack for it. That fact that (Las Vegas) worked out for him has been outstanding.”

Dan D’Uva has been calling a lot of wins in his short time as the team’s broadcaster.
“He’s lucky,” said Doc Emrick, a longtime hockey announcer and mentor to D’Uva. “They’ve given him a lot of fun.”
Courtesy of Dan D’Uva

Emrick met D’Uva when he gave a presentation at a broadcasting workshop at Fordham, where D’Uva was a student after SU. D’Uva, who Emrick remembered fondly as “politely aggressive,” approached and asked for advice.

At about the same time, D’Uva interned for the YES Network and met Ian Eagle, an SU graduate and national play-by-play broadcaster. Eagle noticed immediately that this “runner” was different than most because of the questions he asked. In between grabbing coffee, making copies and running into the press room to hold the backdrop, D’Uva asked Eagle about play-by-play preparation, delivery, pacing and vernacular.

D’Uva sent both Eagle and Emrick tapes of his game broadcasts. Both praised his poise with rarely making factual mistakes, but they told him to hone the smoothness and confidence in his delivery. Throughout the next eight years, first broadcasting the Trenton Devils and then the Crunch, the pair noticed the improvement that comes with broadcasting dozens of games per season alone in minor-league hockey. In later tapes, they noticed D’Uva learning the subtler points, like when to pause or insert a biographical detail about the player carrying the puck.

Last season, though the Crunch ultimately fell to the Grand Rapids Griffins in the Calder Cup, Eagle felt struck by his friend’s progression.

“He sounded like an NHL broadcaster,” Eagle said. “You can’t fake it. He’s relentless. … People have opinions quickly when they tune in, and Dan’s development as a broadcaster really hit during that Calder Cup run.”

Yet nothing prepared D’Uva for the grieving city he needed to address in the most significant broadcast of his life.

As Engelland spoke, D’Uva wrestled with how to translate the notes jotted at the bottom of the media guide into something bigger. Only later did he realize everything he processed and what was at stake: How to sum up the generally accepted perception of Las Vegas and respect the fragility felt after the massacre. How to parallel a new major-league era emergence and a community’s emotional resurgence. How to relate the feeling of this night for both a visitor and a local. How to convey that, in the divide of hurt, the Golden Knights’ arrival at least for now brought everyone together.

In the moment, as Engelland skated away, D’Uva hadn’t thought any of that. He watched the crowd stir and roar in a way that resonated more deeply than excitement for a game. The first responders walked off the ice. The Coyotes skated to D’Uva’s left, the Golden Knights to his right. He told the listeners what he felt.

“The scene here is unlike any other I’ve ever experienced,” D’Uva said. “Everyone remains on his or her feet, the large majority waving white rally towels that were handed out. Twenty-five years ago, Bruce Springsteen wrote a song with a line about Las Vegas, the Desert City. He said: ‘All that’s sure on The Boulevard is that life’s just a house of cards.’ Well there’s something new on Las Vegas Boulevard. And it’s strong. It’s Vegas Strong.

“And tonight, we have living proof. And now, we’ve got hockey.”

Published on October 29, 2017 at 10:44 pm

Contact Sam: sjfortie@syr.edu | @Sam4TR