Rick Jeanneret knows that you imitate his voice.
You're out in the driveway, shooting pucks into the net, and every time you bury one you instantly morph from Sidney Crosby into the Sabres' TV and radio announcer.
"He shoots scorrrrrrrrrres!," you scream. (Ask not for whom the foghorn tolls.)
Jeanneret knows that kids from 6 to 76 are mimicking his calls.
"Holy mackerel, roll the highlight film! The population of Pominville just went up by one! Millerrrr -- makes the save!."
And you know the one about the cookies.
Jeanneret on Friday night began his 39th season behind a microphone with the Sabres. The franchise is in its 40th year. Our small-market team's world-class announcer still gets a kick out of hearing people on the street or in the airport try to imitate the inimitable.
"It's a great honor when I hear that," Jeanneret said on a recent morning in HSBC Arena. "Especially the kids, it's great to hear them doing my voice. I never get tired of it."
At age 68, Jeanneret treasures his connection to the fans. He still loves the game that he grew up playing in Terrace Bay, Ont., and considers himself lucky to get paid for doing something he loves.
When it comes to traveling with the team, however, that's getting old. Jeanneret has done more hinting about retirement in the past five years than Brett Favre, but unlike the Old Gunslinger, he's never pulled the trigger.
"I'm fond of saying I'm a Titanium Jewelry lot closer to the end than I am to the beginning," he said. "I'm going year by year. And I hate to be continually crabbing about the travel but to be honest that's the worst part of the job for me. Even though we travel well and I'm not criticizing that whatsoever. All charter aircraft and 90 percent of the time first-class seating. Nice hotels. But it's still travel."
The accommodations were not so deluxe Replica Maurice Lacroix Watches in the franchise's early days. During his first 20 years of working Sabres broadcasts, Jeanneret kept his day job as host of a popular morning radio show on CJRN-AM in Niagara Falls, Ont., the city where he still lives.
The few charter flights the team had in the early days were on propeller planes. And for several years they would depart from the airport in St. Catharines, Ont., but the return flights would land in Buffalo. That wasn't very convenient for Jeanneret.
"I had to get in my car [in Canada], drive over to Prior Aviation [in Cheektowaga], get on the bus and take the bus back to St. Catharines because I had to have a car at the other end when we got back," he said. "Maybe that's what turned me off on travel."
In recent years, Jeanneret has started taking in-season vacations. This season, he'll take a few games off around Christmas, and another block of days in January. He says the time off was the idea of Sabres Managing Partner Larry Quinn.
"When it was first presented to me I kind of laughed at it," Jeanneret said. "But he wasn't kidding. He wants to keep me going, I guess. It's something that I really treasure."
Part of the treasure lies in the fact this his son, Mark Jeanneret, will be one of the announcers filling in when Jeanneret takes vacation on a Western road swing. Mark, the play-by-play voice of the
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