panoo

Doug Ward | NHL.com correspondent
Feb 19, 2007, 12:00 PM EST

When Chicago Blackhawks play-by-play announcer Dan Kelly looks back on his formative years in St. Louis, he recalls a place where every kid in town wanted to be Brett Hull.

“All the kids growing in St. Louis wanted to wear No. 16,” Kelly is saying by phone from Edmonton. “I was one of them.”

What Kelly doesn’t mention is that a lot of those St. Louis kids wanted to be him. And a lot of the Gateway City grownups wanted to be his father.

As the son of the legendary St. Louis Blues announcer of the same name, Dan Kelly had an enviable lifestyle. He not only dreamed of being Brett Hull, he rode on the same charter flights and hung out in the arenas along with his idol.

“As the baby of the family,” said Kelly, the youngest of six kids, “I was spoiled. I went to Winnipeg on charters five times. I went to Chicago for a playoff series.”

That idyllic life was shattered in 1989 when cancer took his father’s life at the age of 52. The younger Kelly was a 14-year-old high school freshman at the time.

The elder Dan Kelly was born Patrick Daniel, while he named his youngest son Daniel Patrick, so they are not technically Sr. and Jr.

The original Dan Kelly had a booming voice, a palpable passion for the game, and a hint of a Canadian accent that brought an aura of history and authenticity to the proceedings, the same way a British accent calling golf evokes images of St. Andrews and the roots of that game.

For 21 years, Kelly’s sublime call emanated from the old St. Louis Arena, reaching as far north as Canada and as far south as Florida on 50,000 watt KMOX. While the Blues struggled to find an identity beyond their perennial playoff disappointments, Kelly gave them a voice.

Kelly wasn’t a local talent who had won over the hearts of a small market due to familiarity, as is so often the case with team broadcasters. Kelly received national exposure as the voice of the CBS game of the week in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and was the voice of Hockey Night in Canada. He also called the action at the 1987 Canada Cup and 1988 Calgary Olympics.

If you were listening in for the first time, it took about five seconds of hearing Kelly’s call to realize he was the real deal. Young Dan Kelly says the first thing that grabbed you when you listed to his dad was the voice.

“First and foremost,” Kelly says of his father, “he had an engine — meaning a voice — that set him apart. The raw power of his voice was perfect for hockey. It’s a game of excitement and he could convey that, just with his voice. And he was very passionate about his job.”

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