Islanders: Brendan Burke Wins Emmy for Play-By-Play

The New York Islanders are insanely lucky. Bias aside, they genuinely have one of the best broadcast teams in the sport with Brendan Burke, Butch Goring, Shannon Hogan, and AJ Mleczko holding it down every night.

Well, this past week Brendan Burke was awarded the Emmy for Sports Play-By-Play taking home some hardware to prove our point.

Brendan took over the Islanders play-by-play role in 2016 after Howie Rose stepped away to focus on baseball. Over the past six years, Burke has called Islanders games for MSG and on a national level for NBC and now TNT.

Burke got the role at just 32 years old and has taken off and run with it. He’s grown with the team, who struggled in his first two years on the job but has developed into a perennial contender over the last few years. Some of Burke’s best calls have come in the playoffs. For instance, the Josh Bailey overtime goal against the Penguins:

“Game 1 to the Island” is such a good call. It’s arguably his best play by play moment, which there are many, but I think my favorite thing about Burke is while yes he does have that prototypical “broadcaster voice” he doesn’t take himself too seriously, he makes the broadcast entertaining, and he’s extremely wise with his words.

For instance, when the New York Islanders returned home to the Nassau Coliseum to play their first regular-season game in the building in three years, Burke set the scene perfectly.

His words perfectly describe how we felt as Islanders fans returning to that building. It was a huge moment, and man did he do it justice. Just think how lucky Islanders fans are for a second here.

Their last three play-by-play guys are Brendan Burke, Howie Rose, and Jiggs McDonald. It doesn’t get much better than that. Hopefully, Brendan is here for as long or longer than the last two making a name for himself in Islanders history.

Congrats on the Emmy, Brendan. It was beyond well deserved.