By Jared Sugerman
Josh Heller, former voice of the Huskies on WRBB, and Bryan Esner, a men’s hockey team forward for the last four years, have taken unconventional routes into the world of professional hockey.
Unconventional, because Heller can’t score goals with a microphone, and a game of pond hockey isn’t easy to come by when you grow up in Arizona, like Esner.
So perhaps no pair would be better suited to work with a hockey team in the warm weather climate of South Carolina.
The Stingrays, the East Coast Hockey League affiliate of the Washington Capitals, recently signed both Northeastern alumnus, adding Esner to their roster and bringing in Heller to do play-by-play for the team’s radio broadcasts.
Though Esner played his entire college career in a region steeped in hockey history, the Arizona native who played junior hockey in Texas, is familiar with playing in an environment where hockey is still a growing sport.
“When you’re on the ice, it’s the same,” Esner said. “You’ve played countless years and gotten so much experience that it doesn’t matter really where you’re playing.”
Esner got his first taste of professional hockey last spring, playing 15 games with the Peoria Rivermen of the American Hockey League in the spring. He said the experience will be an asset this season, as he works his way closer to the National Hockey League.
“It was a great opportunity to be there and to see what I need to work on in the summer,” Esner said. “Because I’ve had four or five months to work on what I need to work on to succeed at that level.”
Heller also spent the last few months sharpening the skills that brought him to South Carolina. He worked this past summer in Pensacola, Fla., calling games on the radio for the Pensacola Pelicans of the American Association of Independent Professional Baseball.
Like Esner, Heller, the former broadcaster for the NU men’s hockey team said he learned from his experience, finding what he needed to do to adjust to life as a professional.
“When I was with Northeastern, I could basically say pretty much what I wanted,” Heller said. “When I was down in Pensacola, I got an e-mail about a quarter of the way through the season from the owner of the team and he said he thought I was being too negative [about the team] and that I should really tone it down.”
However, Heller appears to be doing well as a broadcaster, considering where he thought his life was headed just a few years ago.
“I was a physics major when I went into college,” Heller said. “I have a friend of mine that I went to high school with that’s also going into sportscasting and I talked with him, and I thought I’d give it a shot. It was always something that I thought ‘that’d be a really awesome thing to do,’ but I never actually thought that I’d be the one doing it.”
Heller has never played organized ice hockey. There wasn’t a team or league to sign up for when he was growing up in Sharon.
While both Esner and Heller said they are happy for the opportunity to work for the Stingrays, neither plans to settle in South Carolina. Esner has a try-out this week with the Hershey Bears, Washington’s American Hockey League affiliate. Heller hopes after two or three years, Stingrays President Darren Abbott, a former broadcaster himself, will help him move up in the world of hockey broadcasting.
