The Edmonton Oilers are back in action and the broadcast team that brings fans all that action on 630 CHED is expanding.
Long-time Red Deer Rebels play-by-play announcer Cam Moon is joining the broadcast team this year, calling games when Jack Michaels will be expanding his portfolio to include TV duties.
“I was so excited. I was all sorts of jacked up,” Moon told Inside Sports with Reid Wilkins about when he got the call.
LISTEN: Cam Moon joins Inside Sports with Reid Wilkins (interview with Moon starts about 20 minutes in)
Moon got his start calling hockey after a not-so-successful attempt at junior hockey.
“When I was playing junior, it was crystal clear that I wasn’t going to be a pro,” he said, laughing. “Painfully crystal clear as I was dodging pucks in the Western Hockey League.”
But the WHL has a deal. It will pay for your post-secondary for as many years as you played in the league and Moon wanted to take radio and television broadcasting and wanted to do it at NAIT.
The first year at NAIT, he played for the school’s hockey team. The second year, he got a job doing colour commentary for WHL games on TSN.
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“(And) not because I was good — because I was terrible — but because I just played in the league,” he said, laughing again. “It was the only reason.”
After working that gig for a couple of years, he got his first play-by-play job in Nanaimo, B.C., calling games for the Nanaimo Clippers, of the B.C. Hockey League.
“So I packed up my ’86 Camaro and I drove it all the way to Nanaimo. I was there for three years.”
In 1998, he started as the play-by-play announcer for the Red Deer Rebels, a job he’s had ever since.
Until the Oilers called.
“I wasn’t looking to go. But when you get the opportunity to call games at the top level for your number one favorite team growing up in the world and in your hometown, yeah, that seems like a slam dunk to me.”
On Tuesday, he got his first look inside Rogers Place as a member of the broadcast team. A moment that he said made it “all come together.”
“There’s a season around the corner of an old Canadian division with an Oilers team that looks improved and ready to go and could be extremely competitive, I don’t know why you wouldn’t be fired up.”
Moon’s first game on 630 CHED will be Thursday night when the Oilers host the Vancouver Canucks for the second of two games in a row. And there’s one player in particular he’ll be paying attention to this season: Jesse Puljujarvi.
“After being in Europe and playing and getting a little older, a little wiser, maybe a little stronger, I don’t know. Whatever it is, he looked good (Tuesday),” Moon said.
“I guess if he turns out to be anywhere close to the potential that you saw in his draft year when he was amazing, like he was the guy, was unbelievable. That’s like a free player.
“That his potential and and if he really turns out to be as good as as he’s looked so far, then that’s going to help the Oilers a ton.”
Moon will be calling all regional games for the Oilers on 630 CHED this season. Bob Stauffer remains the colour commentator for all games. The lineup before the games with The Faceoff Show with Reid Wilkins and Rob Brown and Overtime Openline with Wilkins won’t change either.
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