Joe Beninati and Craig Laughlin are not the best commentary duo in the NHL, according to a survey of fans from around the league.
The Athletic, which posted the results of the survey on Thursday, polled 7,000 fans and asked them to rate their favorite teams’ broadcasts on a 1-to-5 scale. Fans were also allowed to rate as many other local broadcasts as they wished.
The survey ranked the broadcasts by creating a local ranking and a national ranking and then averaging the two ratings. The methodology attempts to balance the feelings of potentially biased home fans with the opinions of more neutral outside parties.
The long-time, cherished Monumental Sports Network duo finished eighth out of 32 broadcasts.
Joe B and Locker ranked fifth among local rankings and 13th among national rankings, seeing their overall rank improve by one spot from ninth place last year. The dynamic duo are approaching 30 years together in the booth, first joining up in 1996 after Kenny Albert left Home Team Sports to become the radio play-by-play voice of the New York Rangers.
Since then, they’ve been the voices behind the Capitals’ Stanley Cup-winning season (2018), the franchise’s first Stanley Cup Final appearance in 1998, and nearly all of Alex Ovechkin’s 853 career goals. The pair has won dozens of Emmys while Beninati has also been tabbed broadcaster of the year and received the Capital Emmy’s Board of Governors Award in 2020.
“I went to my first Caps game this season,” one fan wrote on the survey. “And I missed them. Weird, right?”
Bally Sports Detroit’s Ken Daniels and Mickey Redmond took the top spot after finishing second in last year’s poll. One of the cited best calls of the 2023-24 season from Daniels is Patrick Kane’s overtime winner in his return to Chicago against the Blackhawks.
Finishing last in the rankings was the Boston Bruins’ team of Jack Edwards and Andy Brickley. Edwards has long been a controversial figure in broadcasting not only due to his intense Boston homerism but also for putting his foot in his mouth on more than one occasion.
For example, during the 2023 playoffs, he compared a Boston Bruins loss to the Hindenburg disaster. Earlier that season he found himself in some hot water after fat-shaming forward Pat Maroon. He’s also not afraid to criticize Capitals forwards Tom Wilson and Alex Ovechkin, and he once called Braden Holtby an “AHL-quality” goaltender.
Edwards is retiring from the booth after a 19-year run with Boston concluded this season.
