Meet the Bruins new broadcast team

By Eric J. Welsh, The Progress

September 28, 2007

The first time Jacob Bestebroer was called into action as a colour analyst, things did not go well. Bestebroer was plucked out of the stands moments before the start of a Chilliwack Chiefs game, when the regular colour guy failed to show up.

“I still laugh about it,” Bestebroer recalls. “I didn’t know what was going on. The play-by-play man would point at me. I’d point at him. There was dead air. It didn’t go well.”

Thankfully, Bestebroer was resilient enough to stick with it, and he ended up being a colour analyst on Chiefs broadcasts for parts of three seasons.

This fall he joins the Chilliwack Bruins broadcast team alongside play-by-play man Dave Sheldon. “I took last year off and I was really looking forward to the break,” Bestebroer says. “But about halfway through the season I realized I really missed the job. I’m talking hockey 90 per cent of the time so you might as well put a microphone in front of me.”

Sitting alongside Bestebroer in the Bruins media box last year, his passion for the game was obvious.
For all intents and purposes, he was doing the work of a colour analyst anyways, breaking down the game with a sophistication that the casual fan, and your friendly neighborhood sports reporter, just can’t
match. The man knows hockey inside and out. So does Sheldon, and that’s why they should form a dynamic duo in the broadcast booth.

“That’s the way I watch the game,” Bestebroer says. “We both do. The play that makes the goal often happens 60 feet from the net. You’ve got to know that as the colour guy and you’ve got to know that as the
play-by-play guy. If Dave doesn’t notice it I will and if I don’t notice it Dave will.”

Sheldon’s transition is an interesting one.  He steps into the play-by-play role after doing four years of colour commentary on Everett Silvertips and Bruins broadcasts.

“I think the biggest difference in roles is that my job now is more about read and react as opposed to breaking down the play. You really have to make sure your names and numbers are down. You have to try to not be redundant when you’re explaining things. And you want to keep it fresh even though you might be describing the Bruins going on the power play for the 20th time in the game.”

Sheldon admits it will be hard to reign in his inner colour analyst, but he suggest his prior experience will be a valuable asset in the new role. “You can’t help but be an analyst once you’ve been an analyst,” he says.

Sheldon’s primary goal in either role has always been to make the game sound exciting, even when it’s not.
“We’re not in the Stanley Cup finals, but I like a tautness to the call, even if it’s a 7-1 skunkout,” he says. “It’s all about the theatre of the mind. You have to think of every game as a one-goal game.”

It’s also about knowing the teams and the players inside out. 

“A lot of my prep work is done automatically because I’m a fan of the team and league,” Bestebroer says. “I
don’t need to sit down and get a crash course on the Kamloops Blazers because I’ve been on their website
and I’ve followed their draft picks. I’ve seen a lot of these WHL guys already in midget and bantam. These
are the guys who are moving into the league.”

Sheldon recalls a meeting with ex-Vancouver Canucks play-by-play man Jim Robson, a National Hockey League Hall-of-Famer.

“He told me you can never do enough homework” Sheldon says. “If you are a student of the game, you want to know as much as you possibly can. I’m looking to glean as much information as possible from anyone anywhere in the league because I want to be as knowledgeable as possible. Game day prep doesn’t exist for me. Every day is game day.”

Prep work will involve frequent interaction with the Bruins players, and Bestebroer looks forward to
getting to know Chilliwack’s hockey stars. “You’ve got to know the players a little bit personally,” he says. “It’s a professional relationship. We’re not going out for dinner with them unless it’s a team function, but getting to know their personalities and just chatting with them is important. I’ve always found being up in the booth that I’ll be talking about a player and a story will pop into my head that I got from just chatting.”

Professional relationship is the key phrase in that quote. Bestebroer and Sheldon cannot get too buddy
buddy with the players, because that compromises objectivity. There will come a time during the season when players will screw up. Sheldon will have to point it out and Bestebrouer will have to analyze it and they can’t get too wrapped up in not hurting a player’s feelings.

“I think what you look at in bringing the story of the game out is you have to be honest, and sometimes honesty is brutal,” Sheldon notes. “If you’re going to be fair and honest then I don’t think it can come back
on you.”

Bestebroer says mistakes will happen, but there’s a proper way to convey that information. “If there’s a glaring error — a giveaway at the blueline that leads to a breakaway goal for the opposition — you’re going to mention that player by name,” he says. “You can’t avoid it. But the one thing I’ve always tried to do is if I’m negative about a player in a broadcast, I’ll always try to find something positive to say about him before the end of the game.”

Sheldon says it’s important to remember that WHL  players are still developing. They’re not
professionals.  “There’s a way to put it,” he observes. “You don’t say the player made a stupid play. You say that, on that play, so and so might have thought things out a bit differently. You can be critical of a player without beating them down and that’s the difference.”