Emrick, Voice of the N.H.L, Leaves Devils

The best local sports announcers are often as well known and as beloved as a team’s players. Think of Vin Scully and the Dodgers. Marv Albert and the Knicks. Mel Allen and the Yankees. Chick Hearn and the Lakers. Mike (Doc) Emrick became that distinctive figure for Devils fans for 21 seasons.

But Emrick announced Thursday that he was reducing his workload as he nears 65, which meant cutting his ties to the Devils and the MSG Networks. He will remain the lead N.H.L. voice for NBC and Versus.

“I’m not feeble and I’m not hobbling along,” he said by telephone. “I still have the energy. I still love the sport and love any excuse to be inside watching it. But it’s time to look ahead.”

Emrick has pared his Devils duties by five games in each of the past three seasons. He called 59 games last season and nearly that many for NBC and Versus.

“At one point in March, I did eight games in 10 days, all in different cities, and they were all spread out enough that I had to fly to each one of them,” he said. “By the eighth game, I probably wasn’t doing the job I was doing on the first of the eight.”

He grades himself after every game, on a scale of A to C; he lets others assess his rare lesser work.

“I was grading myself honestly, and they weren’t straight A’s,” Emrick said, explaining that getting facts wrong or misidentifying players are among the errors that reduce his grades.

The dual local and national schedules have been the work of “one and a half men,” he said. “Lord knows we don’t want to go to two and a half men.” Seemingly, Emrick was admitting to a lack of tiger blood.

Announcers are often workhorses. In the season after the 2004-5 lockout, Emrick said he called 152 local, national and Winter Olympic games. That same season, his former partner John Davidson called 153. “I don’t know why we did that, but we were invited to do it and we like working,” Emrick said.

Davidson left announcing after that season to run the St. Louis Blues. If Emrick ever had a desire to run the Devils, Lou Lamoriello, the president and general manager, blocked his path.

During Emrick’s stints (from 1983-86 and 1993-2011) as the Devils’ announcer, the team became one of the best in the N.H.L. and won three Stanley Cup championships. Through those decades, he became hockey’s pre-eminent announcer, mixing his appreciation for English, an ability to maintain his composure during the fastest of game sequences and his ability to pronounce the most difficult-to-pronounce names.

He said what he would miss most about his Devils work was the interaction with fans and the team.

“Fans would come up and say hello to Chico and me and suggest things like the naming of a line,” he said, referring to his color analyst, Chico Resch. “And over the past 18 years, my parents died, and we had some significant losses in our family of canines. So many people sent cards. I saved them all. All these tragedies happened during the hockey seasons. To get to a funeral home and see a spray of flowers from the Devils fan club and another from Lou Lamoriello or the Devils players — that’s what I won’t forget.”