Alison Lukan body-checks the TV jocks

Hockey analyst makes Root's hockey telecasts second to none

The Seattle Kraken may or may not move on to the third round of the Stanley Cup playoffs tonight, but for a couple weeks already I’ve missed a woman’s touch during the team’s hockey telecasts.

Yes, indeed. I admire a woman’s insights into the rough-and tumble — and beautiful —  game of hockey, which I played through college and consider the greatest team sport on earth.

Alison Lukan has been the intermissions game analyst for Root Sports Northwest’s Kraken coverage since the team’s inaugural season in 2021-22.  The team qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs this season, and it won its first series against the defending champion Colorado Avalanche.

However, Root is not covering the second round or any subsequent rounds the Kraken would play if it wins game 7 tonight against the Dallas Stars. Sadly, without Lukan and the rest of the Root team, the second round broadcasts — shown on ESPN, TNT and elsewhere — have been a letdown.

Sometimes you don’t know how good you have it until it is taken away, if even until next season.

Lukan and Co. are a cheerful, engaging, articulate, knowledgeable and incisive team. It includes veteran hockey play-by-play announcer John Forslund and player interviews and features by Piper Shaw. But I especially enjoy Lukan’s work. It’s what sports analysis should be.

Put bluntly, Lukan’s prodigious but judicious use of statistics and computer graphics  and her great insight into the psychology and strategy of the game put to shame the work of other broadcast teams. As much hockey as I’ve played and watched, I learn much from her work. 

And she delivers it with grace, charm and poise that, perhaps, is surprising in that prior to her assignment with Root she had never had been on regular TV before and specialized in data-driven hockey stories and other topics. 

Lukan had written about the  NHL and the  Columbia Blue Jackets franchise as well as covered Ohio State women's and men's hockey for The Athletic.  But her love and understanding of the game are captivating and are a solid body check on the flabby commentary often broadcast elsewhere.

Two points are worth making here.

One, even though women are making long-overdue inroads into sports broadcasting, Lukan proves that a woman must work much harder to succeed in what traditionally is a man’s world.  As the housekeeper tells the former general in the Bing Crosby film White Christmas:  “It took 15,000 men to take my place.” (This is, of, course, one more reason to celebrate the fact that we now have women in both the leading administrative leadership positions in the City of Longview.)

Two, retired jocks as commentators often don’t bring much nuance and understanding to the game. They have star power, but many of them strike me as just plain lazy.  

What passes for commentary and analysis often just states the mundane: “The Kraken need to get back the momentum.” “They need to protect and control the puck”  (Duh: The football equivalent of getting first downs and avoiding interceptions). Or, perhaps the most blatantly no-kidding comment: “They need to avoid penalties” (in which a team plays shorthanded.)

I want to enjoy the game, and I  enjoy it more when I learn more about it.

Too often intermission breaks on network sports telecasts become occasion for (polite) locker room banter and inanity. And I often cringe at the frequent abuse of our language. ( I wish I could ban the redundancy “skill set” instead of plain “skills” and ban use of “him and I” instead of “him and me” when a direct object is in use.)

There are, of course, exceptions to this jot about jocks: In baseball, for example, former catcher Tim McCarver was a great — if sometimes too arcane — analyst. Third baseman Alex Rodriguez has brought surprising penetration and understanding to broadcasts.

In general, though,  I’d rather listen to Tom Verducci, a longtime baseball writer and historian, over former Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, as much as I like the guy. 

I’d rather listen to Alison Lukan’s commentary than that of Wayne Gretzky, hockey’s career scoring leader, even though her star power is a night light to the sun.

Lukan’s light helps make Root’s hockey telecasts the most illuminating I’ve ever seen.  I don’t know at this moment whether the Kraken will win tonight and continue their quest for the championship, but in my book Lukan and the rest of the  broadcast team already have won a Stanley Cup.