BSM Writers
Every Week Is Shark Week For Dan Rusanowsky
“You can’t be that guy always looking for the next job. You have to focus on being the best you can be wherever you are.”
Memory is funny. It can be difficult to recall small events in our lives that occurred last week, yesterday or even a few hours ago. Our memories can shift without our permission, painting a picture of an experience that might be different than what other people remember. Memories shape who we are, how we think, and even what we value. The cruel universal reality is that it’s our darkest moments we tend to remember the clearest.
One can argue memory’s greatest ally is time – not the enemy it appears to be. Like a Zamboni to ice, time has a way of healing certain scars from our past, and in the process can turn pain into wisdom. It also has a way of preserving our happiest moments through the decades.
58-year-old Dan Rusanowsky is a man not short on happy memories – and many are tied his 40 year career calling hockey games. He can tell you in great detail about the time the Sharks snapped a 17-game losing streak in Winnipeg on Valentine’s Day 1993.
“After the game,” he smiles “they raised a garbage can in the visitor’s locker room like it was the Stanley Cup.”
His memory is well organized and cataloged. Ask him for a San Jose Sharks story and the Connecticut native would respond with “What season?”
Just about every high point in his professional career is tied to a hockey game on some level. Unfortunately, the same can be said for a very low point in his personal life.
Ask him where his love for hockey began, and Rusanowsky doesn’t hesitate.
Herman Solomon, the brother of Rusanowsky’s mother, sparked Dan’s passion for the sport at a very young age. The two were regulars at New Haven Nighthawk home games and spent plenty of time watching the nearby Yale Bulldogs on the ice. To this day, Rusanowsky continues to honor his uncle’s influence.
“I still mention him every game,” beams the proud nephew. “I would always refer to him as the unofficial statistician of the broadcast, so much so that people have asked me if he’s actually on the payroll.”
Long before young Rusanowsky found himself in front of a microphone, he found himself on the stage. He was never far away from the opening of a new play – portraying Captain Hook in Peter Pan and the title role in a Charlie Brown Christmas production. His enthusiasm for acting faded a bit as he entered high school – but Rusanowsky still values his experience as a thespian.
“What I do professionally is, and always has been, performance art. I’m presenting my audience with the images only I can see. Every game is a performance of sorts.”
Rusanowsky’s reverence for his profession is clear, and it started with what he calls the “romantic” crackle of the radio dial. From his home in Milford, he recalls hearing Penguins broadcasts, Buffalo Sabres, Toronto Maple Leafs via Hamilton, and even the Montreal Canadians.
“The whole thing was in French so I couldn’t understand a word,” chuckles Rusanowsky. “Every once in a while they would mention a name though, so I recognized the names!”
Understanding he wanted to pursue a career in his two passions – hockey and radio – Rusanowsky set off for college at St. Lawrence University, roughly 5 hours north of Milford.
St. Lawrence was attractive to Rusanowsky on a couple of levels. For one, it was a small school, a size that would afford him personal relationships with his professors, and two, the Saints played D1 hockey.
“My freshman year I went in there, not really with any clue what I was doing, and I introduced myself to their play by play man, Bob Vilas, and pretty much said I was interested in pursuing this as a career.”
To Rusanowsky’s shock, it just so happened they were in need of a fill in play by play announcer later that season. Vilas told the 18-year-old to watch some games from the booth and record some practice tapes. In time, Rusanowsky could feel Vilas’ confidence growing in him, but even he couldn’t have predicted what happened next.
With the Saints games being delivered on the local NPR station, Vilas didn’t have the luxury of commercial breaks during intermissions.
“One game in that first season he came up to me and said ‘Dan, here’s your interview subject, I’ll be back in 5 minutes, you’re on in 30 seconds,’ just like that I was on the air for the first time ever.”
Rusanowsky still remembers the man he interviewed – Tom Burke, a hockey writer – but he wouldn’t give himself high marks for the conversation.
“I don’t have that tape. I wish I did! I’m sure it was just about the worst interview in the history of radio!”
While the thought of the tape might be cringe-worthy, he looks at that experience as a seminal moment. Not only was it his on air debut, but he was given a challenge he wasn’t prepared for and didn’t back down.
“In this job,” Rusanowsky explains, “what you expect is often not what happens. You have to be prepared for the unexpected and find a way to make it work.”
Rusanowsky made it work, and a Hall of Fame broadcast career was born. By his Junior year, he became the voice of the Saints, a title he didn’t want to lose on account of graduation after his senior year, so he enrolled in grad school at nearby Clarkson University. He knew the next logical step towards his ultimate dream of landing in the NHL was a position in the American Hockey League. He would check religiously, and finally – one day after his graduation from Clarkson – he got an offer from the New Haven Nighthawks. His hometown AHL club.
He was thrilled for the opportunity, but his paycheck left a lot to be desired.
“When I got the job in June I weighed 175 lbs. The next time I stepped on the scale was when I was home for Christmas in December – I was 148 lbs.”
The radio veteran laughs today when talking about his early days in the industry, as he grinded his teeth through so much uncertainty. He recalls looking forward to road trips because he could pocket a little extra per diem cash. One thing he never did was look too far ahead, and he believes that made all the difference in his career ascension.
“You can’t be that guy always looking for the next job. You have to focus on being the best you can be wherever you are.”
In his five years with the Nighthawks, Rusanowsky was responsible for promoting the club and selling season tickets – a side of the business that interested him greatly. For the first time in his life, Rusanowsky was learning about the business side of his craft. Understanding the intersection of art and commerce. It’s that layered knowledge of the radio business that would serve him greatly in his next position.
By the late 1980s Dan was approaching 30. He knew in the next couple years, if he wanted a to buy a house or settle down with a family, he’d have to consider a career shift. He couldn’t accomplish his personal goals on an AHL salary. Before he walked out of the booth entirely, he knew the NHL was expanding with a franchise in the Bay Area – a region of the world as foreign to the Connecticut kid as another country entirely. Always a realist, Rusanowsky understood his chances of becoming the radio voice of the San Jose Sharks was slim, but he submitted his tape to the powers that be regardless.
“I mailed in my tape and they asked for another one, that was a good sign. I sent another tape and they asked to fly me out for an in-person interview, that was a very good sign. I fly out to meet everyone and they tell me I’m one of a couple different people they’re considering, that’s a great sign.”
Dan is not lost for words when you ask him about his uncle Solomon, Bob Vilas, and about a dozen other individuals who he credits with the rise of his career. However, when you ask him about the moment he was offered an NHL radio announcing job, he’s efficient and humble.
“They offered me the job and I said yes almost before they could finish asking.”
The San Jose Sharks played their first two seasons roughly an hour north of San Jose in the Cow Palace just south of San Francisco. The venue was a bit of relic, even 30 years ago, but that certainly didn’t bother their 30-year-old radio play by play man.
“I look back at the Cow Palace years and remember a lot of fun times,” he offers with a grin, as if to say he can’t begin to tell me half the stories he has locked away.
“We definitely did our fair share of losing though.”
During their second season, the Sharks lost a staggering 17 consecutive games and earned just 24 points in the standings. It was clear after two seasons, the shine of the new NHL franchise was wearing off in the Bay Area.
“A new team is like a new baby,” Rusanowsky explains. “The first year, everyone wants to come and see the baby, then the 2nd year you get less visitors. Well, our circumstances were such that in year 3, despite losing so much in year 2, we had a renewed energy around the team when we finally moved to San Jose. San Jose is interesting in that it’s bigger than San Francisco, but it’s very much in the shadow of San Francisco. This was the first team of the major four leagues who said ‘we want to be in San Jose, we want San Jose in our name,’ and the community around here really embraced us for that.”
In their first season in San Jose and third in existence, the Sharks made their first postseason appearance. Soon thereafter, the new franchise was much more than a novelty in the league – they were regularly playing meaningful hockey in late spring and the entire Bay Area was taking notice.
Personally, Dan couldn’t have been happier. He had met his wife in his new adapted city and not only was he an NHL play by play man – he had called every game in franchise history. That streak, unfortunately, came to an unexpected end on November 25, 2000.
Like they so often are, Dan finds the details leading up to this particular bad memory very easy to recall.
“It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The New Jersey Devils were in town and I had just spent the morning at practice getting some interviews done for that night. My routine for home games was generally always mornings with the team, then I’d go home to work in my office before coming back for the game. That day, I was invited to a new restaurant my friends had just opened up, so I thought I’d stop by for a quick lunch, that’s the only reason I was at that particular intersection on that particular day.”
Rusanowsky pauses slightly, as if to apologize for the upcoming hole in his story.
“I don’t remember the impact, of course, but a driver ran a red light – hit my driver’s side door and I woke up in the hospital.”
The then-39-year-old suffered a number of injuries, most notably a fractured femur and a ruptured diaphragm, the second of which would’ve been life threatening if not quickly identified by a specialist that day. That night, the San Jose Sharks played their first game in franchise history without Dan Rusanowsky in attendance. He would spend the next week in the hospital and would not return to the booth for 27 games. It was a dark time for Silicon Valley’s adopted son and his wife, but it’s an experience in which he realized he belonged in San Jose.
“The reception I got from the team, from the fans and from the community was overwhelming. It truly was. When I was healthy enough to return to work, I was presented with four long panels covered in get well messages from fans. Those are still in my house, and they’re not going anywhere.”
Like his panels, Rusanowsky doesn’t seem to be going anywhere either. Last season he called his 2,000th regular season game for the Sharks. He also has the incredibly rare distinction of calling every playoff game in franchise history – including the 2016 run to the Stanley Cup Finals.
Six years ago the East Coaster was immortalized in the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame. Ask him about it and he’s quick to share the honor with his fellow inductees. He points to his nearly 20 year working relationship with KFOX, the terrestrial station that has carried Rusanowsky’s Shark network since 2000. On paper, Dan has done just about all one can hope to do in the world of sports broadcasting, but he’s still as enthusiastic as ever to go to work every day.
“It’s a unique lifestyle, doing what I do. It’s also an honor and a privilege to be broadcasting in the National Hockey League. Working in sports and sports broadcasting is as rewarding now as it’s ever been I believe.
“You look at a market like the Bay Area – there’s people from all walks of life, from all different backgrounds. There’s different groups of people who may disagree on any number of topics – but the one thing we can all see eye to eye on is sports. If our local teams win, we all win, and we can share that together. If we can share that together, I think that opens up a lot of other things we can do together.”
Jack Ferris writes feature stories for BSM and serves as an update anchor for iHeart Radio in San Francisco and as a freelance contributor for the PAC-12 Network. Previously he has worked as a sports anchor for KXLY-TV in Spokane and as the co-host of the Don West Show on KPQ in Central Washington. You can find him on Twitter @JFerris714 or reach him by email at FerrisJack54@gmail.com.
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