Moving on is hard to do. When you’ve had arguably one of the top broadcasting duos for nearly the entirety of your Dallas Stars fandom, having anyone else in the booth will be a strange out-of-body experience the first few times.
But like anything else, the change will settle on you and you’ll grow into the new normal.
Dallas Stars fans will have more change to their game experience this coming season, as long-time play-by-play analyst Ralph Strangis (who resigned in April to pursue other interests) will be replaced by national broadcaster Dave Strader, as Dallas Morning News reported this morning.
There was speculation after the news came out of Strangis’ resignation of who would replace him in the broadcast chair. The Stars indicated they were looking at a candidate that had national broadcast experience. Daryl ‘Razor’ Reaugh, the long-time color analyst of the Stars, made a push to move into the play-by-play seat.
It seems the Stars got their candidate after all, and Razor and Strader will be the new duo. Razor will continue as the color analyst and Strader will take on play-by-play duties.
The best thing about this hire, to me, is that this sends a nice message to the NHL community that the Dallas Stars are a premier destination for jobs like this. To be the best organization possible, you have to attract and retain top talent in all areas, not just on the ice (though, we all know, that’s #1 priority for success). Having a national voice step in as the daily local analyst for this team is a great move by the organization, and can only have the league talking about the Stars more, even if only in some small way. Strader will continue to work national games when they do not conflict with Stars games.
And with Strader seeing the Stars players every day for here on out, we can hope that these occurrences happen a little less often moving forward.