The NHL is coming back to ESPN for the first time since 2004 and the network quickly answered one of the most pertinent fan questions when they announced the nostalgic ESPN National Hockey Night theme music will also return.
The sport is back, the nostalgic music is back, but what we don’t know yet is who will be covering the game broadcasts.
ESPN released a fantastic hype video announcing the NHL was returning to the Worldwide Leader. And throughout the one-minute video, much of the highlights were narrated by Gary Thorne. As ESPN celebrates the return of the NHL and their theme music, Thorne should be next.
“I’d love to talk about it with ESPN and see what direction they’re going to take with it, what the schedule is going to look like, all of that,” Thorne told Richard Deitsch of The Athletic. “But from the primary foundational question of, ‘Is that something that interests me?’ Yes, it does.”
Thorne has been humbled by the amount of people who immediately reached out, rooting for him to reunite with ESPN.
“I’m just so happy that people have remembered and have those kinds of positive memories about the time that myself and Bill and our crew were doing the games,” Thorne added to Deitsch. “It’s pretty amazing to me that after all these years that it still lives in the forefront of people’s minds, that connection with ESPN and the NHL and our broadcast.”
For the last 14 years, Thorne was the Baltimore Orioles lead play-by-play voice on MASN. He sat out the COVID-shortened season in 2020, but expected to return this year until the network made significant personnel changes.
It’s been nearly two decades since Thorne called an NHL game on ESPN, and it’s been four years since he last called a hockey game in any capacity. ESPN still employs Barry Melrose, Linda Cohn, Steve Levy and John Buccigross as the faces of its NHL coverage, so they have an infrastructure of talent on board to cover the sport. But the 72-year-old Thorne is interested and available to join the crew.
