Remembering Barry Melrose, the hockey voice who made expertise fun

The suits and the mullet made Barry Melrose instantly recognizable. ESPN’s tribute lingers on those details, but the reason to watch is what happens between the jokes: a hockey lifer making the sport feel approachable without sanding away its rough edges.

Melrose died Wednesday, September 9, at 70, the NHL confirmed. The video published September 10 by NHL on ESPN features Jeremy Schaap remembering a colleague whose television presence became a connection to the game for viewers far beyond any one fan base.

It is a remembrance worth returning to after the initial announcement. The clips show a broadcaster comfortable being funny, opinionated and visibly delighted by hockey, often within the same segment.

A coach who could explain what he saw

The tribute traces Melrose’s path from a defenseman in professional hockey to the Los Angeles Kings’ bench. His first season coaching the Kings ended in the 1993 Stanley Cup Final, with Wayne Gretzky leading a team that reached the sport’s biggest stage.

That experience mattered when Melrose moved into television. In the archival clips, he does more than react to a spectacular goal. He diagnoses a struggling team, identifies what is happening in a physical exchange and gives viewers a way to understand what they have just watched.

The humor works because it sits beside that knowledge. One sequence has him cataloguing a succession of infractions; others let his clothes, hair and willingness to join the joke carry the moment. The personality does not require the hockey to disappear.

His colleagues remembered the person

The response from ESPN colleagues adds another dimension. Awful Announcing’s roundup of their tributes describes a man whose generosity and warmth were remembered as readily as his work on camera.

Steve Levy’s remembrance, shared by ESPN PR, emphasized friendship, family and Melrose’s roots. John Buccigross wrote about learning of the death while at a hockey rink in Las Vegas preparing for the coming season. The setting gave an already painful moment an especially personal association.

Other colleagues recalled his approachability, laughter and conversations away from the set. Taken together, those accounts explain why the loss reached beyond the people who watched him analyze a game. For the people beside him, the familiar television personality was also a friend.

More than a familiar face

Melrose stepped away from ESPN in 2023 following a Parkinson’s diagnosis. That history belongs in this remembrance, but it does not establish a cause of death.

The tribute’s strongest passages return to the work itself: the confidence to offer an opinion, the pleasure in a good story and the ability to welcome people into a sport that can seem forbidding from outside. Watching those moments now, the appeal is easy to understand. Melrose made room for expertise and enjoyment in the same conversation.