In Red Wings Land

From ‘You Suck’ To Four Cups, How Ken Kal Became Voice Of Red Wings | 97.1 The Ticket

When the puck drops on the Red Wings’ 2019-20 season, Ken Kal will be starting his 25th year behind the mic.

But before he became the voice of the Red Wings, Kal nearly stopped calling hockey games altogether. Truth is, he never really wanted to do it in the first place.

The year was 1984. Kal was working as a part-time deejay for WAAM in Ann Arbor. Michigan needed someone to call its men’s hockey games, so the university gave him a call.

This is a pretty cool story. Ken Kal shares how he got into doing hockey play-by-play announcing and ended up with the Red Wings. I’ve always been a big fan of Kal and his work. He’s great at what he does and genuinely seems like an excellent human being too. We’re lucky to have him in our hockey world.

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Sean asks: “What teams have done everything they could with their core, but the core wasn’t/isn’t good enough and should blow it up, and don’t know it yet or won’t do it, and will entertain us with mediocrity for a couple more years until it dawns on them?”

Obviously Minnesota. Probably Philadelphia, though that might depend on Carter Hart. Detroit, too, but that would be a bit difficult to pull off.

I guess your reaction to this depends on what you consider the Red Wings’ core?

If you still think the core is Justin Abdelkader, Darren Helm, Luke Glendening and players of that ilk… well then, yeah, that core stinks (really bad).

The reality is that the core of this team is currently Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha, Andreas Athanasiou and Tyler Bertuzzi. Is that good enough to win a Stanley Cup? Right now, no chance in hell. But it’s foolish to think Detroit has done everything they could with that group already. Steve Yzerman has his work cut out for him the next few years. Ask me this question again in 2023.