Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 2, 1991 TAG: 9102020159
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Corwin, 30, covered the New England Whalers in the World Hockey Association 18 seasons ago.
Yes, your subtraction is correct. Corwin covered his first pro hockey game when he was 12 - as a writer for the weekly Malden (Mass.) Sun-Times.
One night, Corwin lugged his portable typewriter into the pressbox at Boston Garden. The security guard wondered how this kid got into the pressbox. It was simple. Corwin had a press credential.
The Whalers knew they had issued a pass to the Malden paper. They just didn't know the writer wouldn't even be a teen-ager.
"I was in the seventh grade," Corwin said. "I loved hockey. One day, my dad and I were in a doughnut shop and the editor of the paper was in there. We asked if I could write a hockey story for him. He said `Sure.' I never thought it would show up in print, but there it was, in the next issue."
Corwin had written an in-depth analysis of the WHA, focusing on the type of play in the league and whether it would survive. Heady stuff at 12. United Press International in Boston wrote a story on Corwin, and then-Whalers' publicist Bob Donovan called Corwin "the next Red Smith."
That was many doughnuts ago. Corwin came to the Roanoke Valley in late August when the Rebels finally offered him the job he had been looking for - broadcasting pro hockey.
Besides calling the Rebels' ECHL road games on WROV (1240 AM), Corwin also is the club's director of marketing and public relations, meaning he works about 60 hours per week. He isn't complaining, however, because he finally is doing what he wants.
"Growing up in the Boston area and being a hockey fan as a kid was great," Corwin said. "There were three pro teams - the Bruins in the NHL, the American Hockey League Braves [the Bruins' farm team] and the Whalers. The college hockey was excellent, too, with Boston College, Boston U., Harvard and Northeastern."
Besides writing for the Malden paper, Corwin worked as a free-lance hockey writer. He was a statistics man for several NHL radio networks and did production assistant work for "Hockey Night in Canada" telecasts in Boston. He officiated youth and high school hockey while attending Northeastern.
All because he asked for a portable typewriter for his 10th birthday.
The same winter he started covering the WHA, he played the sport, too, getting 21 goals and 30 assists for the Malden Pee Wee A Mohawks. Maybe those players taking those long bus rides with Corwin should show him a little more respect.
The Rebels' players call their broadcaster "The Round Man."
Corwin's laughing, although he's not laughing his way to the bank. He's married, with an 8-month-old daughter. He's a very capable broadcaster, and he doesn't have much patience with himself in improving his work.
Before Corwin came to the Rebels, he was working radio news in Kingston, N.Y. On weekends, he and his wife would travel around the Northeast, looking for hockey games and badgering people for a seat in the pressbox, where he would pull out his tape recorder and call games to himself on tape.
"It was a chance to keep my skills polished," Corwin said. "I'm a lot like the players in this league. I have my good nights and my bad nights. I'll come home and ask Judy [his wife], `Well, how did it sound?' and she'll say, `You were good.' And I'll say, `No, I wasn't.' I think I'm very hard on myself.
"I know I'm doing this professionally for the first time, but that's just the way I am."
Corwin's on-air style is very descriptive, and because he works by himself, he feels comfortable at times wearing the analyst's jacket. He tries to bring some perspective to the game as someone who has played, officiated and covered the sport. He is comfortable discussing the proclivities of the power play or the nuances of penalty-killing.
It's too bad more listeners don't get the chance to hear an improving Corwin. In the deal with WROV, the Rebels purchased the airtime and sold advertising, but if the Rebels conflict with a basketball broadcast, the hockey club, as it was told, gets tape-delay airing.
The Rebels pay WROV the same $150 per game for airtime, no matter whether the game broadcast is live or on tape.
Corwin is just glad to be on, period.
"I called around the AHL, ECHL and International Hockey League looking for jobs," Corwin said. "I sent out tapes. Then one day in August, the Rebels called. . . . Quite honestly, the job is quite hectic. Some of the clubs in this league have three people doing the jobs I have."
Although the Rebels are last in ECHL attendance, Corwin said he thinks hockey will survive here. In doing sales work, he said he has found a certain backlash against the sport because "some white-collar businesses consider hockey nothing more than a blue-collar sport."
"The ECHL is getting stronger and people have to come out and see the type of hockey that's played here now," the red-haired broadcaster said. "Part of the problem is that what was being billed as pro hockey in the past was not conducted like pro hockey. That's changed."
If you listen to Corwin's broadcasts, you would know that.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB