Dear NESN,
With the first Bruins broadcast a little less than two months away, we are urging you to please bring back Dale Arnold to do play-by-play for Bruins home games. We have heard "clears the puck down the river" one too many times from Jack Edwards. We understand that you wanted to have a full-time play-by-play man, but was this really what you wanted? You have forced out one of the best hockey play-by-play announcers and one of the classiest guys in the business and replaced him with a soccer and Little League announcer. Dale deserved better and so do the hockey fans of New England. We would hate to see an entire generation of young Bruins fans growing up with Jack Edwards as "the voice of the Boston Bruins". We have had one year of the Jack Edwards experiment, now it is time to bring back Dale.
Dale Arnold should be the home play-by-play man for the following reasons:
- He doesn't turn into a giddy 12 year-old every time a fight breaks out
- He is resourceful (He once skinned a cat and tried to pass it off as a science project).
- He is a New England icon. He has a delicious variation of the lobster roll named after him at the Maine Diner and is the only man ever to announce games for the Bruins, Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots, and Revolution.
- He knows hockey better than Edwards. He has been calling games for 30 years, while Edwards has been interviewing Little Leaguers about their favorite Jack Black movies.
- Edwards' baked bean teeth kind of creep us out.
- Edwards uses (and often misuses) words better suited for a Mensa meeting than a hockey game.
We hope one day Dale Arnold will be back where he belongs: on the ninth floor of The Garden behind a microphone calling games for the Boston Bruins.
Sincerely,
New England Hockey Fans