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Induct Jack Edwards into the Boston homer hall of fame after this wild overreaction to a cheap shot on David Pastrnak
If you’re familiar with Boston sports or, worse yet, an actual Boston sports fan, you’re no doubt familiar with Jack Edwards. The longtime Bruins play-by-play man for NESN, Edwards has become known as one of the biggest homers in sports broadcasting, calling every Bs game like he’s sitting on your couch in Quincy (pronounced Quinzy). Edwards has made a career out of this, and a damn good one at that, but on Monday night he took things just a touch too far with arguably his most heated (and homer-ific) call yet. Check it out.
OK, so let’s just get this out of the way right now so I don’t get angry 10 p.m. Facebook messages from Bruins fans (a thing that actually happens): It is a cheap shot. It's also a cheap shot that happens every night in the National Hockey League. The difference here is that it happened to Edwards’ favorite player on Edwards’ favorite team at the hands of a division rival a week before the playoffs. Is it a scrub move from Komarov? Sure. Did he try to, and we quote, “CHANGE THE TRAJECTORY OF THE BOSTON BRUINS SEASON!” No, no he did not.
It goes on like that for awhile, with Edwards doing his best Jim Ross impression as every new angle is beamed to the booth. “GIVE HIM A MAJOR AND LOOK AT IT!” is no “WITH GOD AS MY WITNESS, HE IS BROKEN IN HALF,” but it is three times as pious and pearl clutching. When the refs hand Komarov a two-minute minor for unsportsmanlike conduct, all Edwards can sputter is “WEAK!” before calling out the officials by name, so every concrete pourer in Dorchester knows where to send their death threats. In today’s day and age, that perhaps even more bush league than nicking an opponent with the end of your stick as you skate by.
Then again, this is what makes Jack Edwards, well, Jack Edwards. His job is to call Bruins games for Bruins fans, and that’s exactly what he does. So let him continue to shout at the walls of the Gahden (not to be confused with the Garden) and count your lucky stars it wasn’t Pastrnak on the end of Tom Wilson’s warpath last week. We truly would have never heard the end of it.