Nick Nickson’s rhythmic cadence and distinctive timbre have narrated nearly all the momentous occasions in Kings history.
The Miracle on Manchester, capped by Daryl Evans’ clutch goal.
The arrival of Wayne Gretzky, and, later, the fateful measurement of Marty McSorley’s stick.
Jonathan Quick’s brilliance in 2012 en route to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup, and Alec Martinez’s sudden-death goal to secure its second two years later.
But after 44 years, that singular voice won’t reverberate across the peaks and valleys of Kings hockey anymore.
Nickson – a staple of broadcasts, telecasts and simulcasts over the decades – will be retiring at the end of the upcoming postseason.
At age 71, he said that he felt well and wanted to enjoy his retirement fully while he still could, planning to golf plenty, travel with his wife – she got another cruise out of him returning for one final season, he said – and share time with his sons and grandchildren, being “around for all the birthdays, not just some of them.”
“It’s been on my radar for a couple of years, retirement. So I’m good with everything,” Nickson said. “I just hope the team has a good playoff run in my last season. I don’t want the last series to be against Edmonton because that was my first series, as Daryl [Evans] remembers, in 1982.”
Nickson joined another 44-year veteran of Kings hockey and an even more consecrated name in franchise lore, Bob Miller, early in the 1981-82 season. That was after Pete Weber, who later returned to the NHL as the voice of the Nashville Predators since their inception, departed for a job with the Seattle SuperSonics.
Since Nickson joined the Kings, the SuperSonics became one of a dozen clubs to have either entered the NBA or relocated. The Predators were one of 16 organizations that either moved or expanded into the NHL in the same time span.
“I’ve been here in Nashville since ’98, and that seems remarkable to me,” Weber said. “But then, I consider the body of Nick’s work and how long it has been for the L.A. Kings, going back to the days of the Forum blue and gold uniforms all the way up through today, and it’s absolutely incredible.”
Nickson’s lineage in broadcast, particularly radio, extends beyond his own career. His father, Nick Nickson Sr. to most but born Nick Nickitiades, had a 60-year tenure on the airwaves. While he went into the Rochester Music Hall of Fame and Nickson Jr. joined Miller and Jiggs McDonald in the Hockey Hall of Fame, they wholly shared a fundamental quality.
“The way he approached his job, he not only wanted to talk to people on the air, he wanted to meet them off the air,” the younger Nickson told the Rochester newspaper the Democrat and Chronicle. “I think that mindset made him popular. People could see the face behind the voice.”
That same affable manner accompanied Nickson to his gigs with the Rochester Americans and New Haven Nighthawks in the minors, and ultimately to his forever home in sunny Southern California. Nickson never joined social media platforms, instead imploring fans to call him directly and talk about the game.
He did that for years on Kings Talk postgame, but his responsibilities shifting more toward the television side after the Kings parted ways with Miller’s successor, Alex Faust, has allowed him to leave the arena earlier and, of course, talk to fans as they exit. He’s also been a team historian, and his efforts on that front should continue, as he said it would be hard to “go cold turkey” on Kings hockey.
Nickson has been a constant beacon in a broadcast landscape dotted by bright stars who endured in their posts. Miller, the Lakers’ Chick Hearn, the Clippers’ Ralph Lawler and Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrín for the Dodgers have made the market the gold standard for local sports broadcasting.
Even beyond his technical ability, which held its own among those towering figures, Nickson was a steadying voice of professionalism and compassion.
“One of the many things I admire about him is his ability to keep his family out in front. I mean, when the Kings would come to Buffalo, it was always a party for my wife and myself when Bob and Nick and company came into town and brought (producer) Bob Borgen,” Weber said. “We’d all get together, and then here is Nick Sr. coming over from Rochester with his family. That was just a fantastic get-together. It was sort of like a Woodstock for broadcasters.”
Miller, who like Nickson studied his craft in college, has praised the strong foundation of Nickson’s broadcasting style and his meticulousness. Nickson said he took pride in his role, particularly when on radio, where the onus was on him to paint a picture of a rapid-fire game for listeners.
“He’s on top of the play. All of us who do hockey play-by-play have this great desire to get the call out before the crowd begins to go crazy after a goal and I think he does that as well as absolutely anybody ever,” Weber said.
For all his professionalism, Nickson also wasn’t above a bit of mischief, as Weber recalled that during the season before the 2005 lockout, he and Nickson “switched broadcasts” one night, with Weber suddenly calling the Kings again and Nickson hopping onto the mic to be the Predators announcer du jour.
In the decade that followed, Nickson would call not one but two Stanley Cup triumphs for the Kings, one that allowed him to prepare extensively – in 2012, the Kings took commanding early leads in both the series and the clinching game – and another in 2014 that afforded him only an instant to formulate his punctuation of Martinez’s dramatic double-overtime series winner.
He’s seen the league and sport evolve from the fledgling days of expansion and the WHA merger’s aftermath to becoming a multi-billion-dollar industry in which even league-minimum salaries are roughly double of what Marcel Dionne made as a superstar in Nickson’s first season in the booth.
“The game is faster. It’s quicker. It’s played more for skilled players,” Nickson said. “It’s evolved, but I personally think it’s in a good place. I love watching the games.”
Nickson said he would miss calling games, after which he still pinched himself some nights, but not miss the travel or “waking up in the middle of the night and not knowing which way to turn to go to the bathroom.”
Above all though, he said, he valued the people – the players, his colleagues, the fans and everyone adjacent to the game that had been so central to his life.
“It was different early in my career, and in the minor leagues. We all rode the same bus together. It was just the one coach, the players, one trainer and one broadcaster. So you became one big family year after year,” Nickson said. “That’s evolved because now there’s so many people that travel as everybody that travels with the Kings knows, there’s one bus for the players or one bus for a staff and everybody else.”
“One of the reasons why I’ve stuck around as long as I have is that it’s great to meet everybody and talk with everybody.”
