Barry Melrose, who coached the Wayne Gretzky-led Los Angeles Kings team that helped put the NHL and hockey on the map in the U.S., and who later became ESPN‘s signature hockey analyst for almost two decades, died Wednesday. He was 70.
Melrose retired from ESPN after an almost two-decade broadcasting career after he revealed just before the start of the 2023-24 NHL season that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
“I’ve had over 50 extraordinary years playing, coaching and analyzing the world’s greatest game, hockey,” Melrose said in a statement at the time. “It’s now time to hang up my skates and focus on my health, my family, including my supportive wife Cindy, and whatever comes next.”
Melrose coached the L.A. Kings the franchise’s first Stanley Cup Finals appearance in 1993, Gretzky’s fifth season in Los Angeles after arriving in a monumental trade with Edmonton. It was Melrose’s first season with the club; he would coach two more seasons in L.A. before turning his attention to TV.
Sporting a mullet, big bright pinstriped suits and with plenty to say, the Saskatchewan-born Melrose became a favorite on ESPN’s hockey coverage almost from the beginning when he joined in 1994; the network’s coverage of the Stanley Cup playoffs that year won a Sports Emmy. He began a full-time role in October 1996, and he appeared regularly on SportsCenter and NHL studio shows often with ESPNers like Steve Levy and John Buccigross, and also called regular-season and playoff games for ESPN and ABC Sports.
He even parlayed his ESPN fame into other TV roles, playing himself in Mystery Alaska, the 1999 feature about a small-town hockey club playing the NHL’s New York Rangers. He also guested as himself in a 2001 episode of ABC’s Michael J. Fox sitcom Spin City and appeared in the 2002 sequel Slap Shot 2: Breaking the Ice.
Buccigross remembered Melrose on Wednesday evening,
“Barry was my best friend at ESPN,” Buccigross wrote on social media Wednesday night. “A big brother figure of rock solid values. I am shook to my core. Barry gave his life to hockey and some of his ESPN family, like me, learned of his shocking death today while at a hockey rink in Las Vegas preparing for the upcoming season. Chilling and fitting — the rink was Barry’s home. A more beloved ESPN institution there has not been. We love you, Barry. Forever.”
Said Levy tonight: “For more than 30 years Barry was the unquestioned face/voice of hockey in the United States. He was a man of the people, a family man, a part of my family. Tonight I’ll toast the kid from Kelvington who made it big but never forgot his roots. Now he can drink all the Bud Lights, smoke all the cigars and play all the rounds of golf he wants to. Barry Melrose was the best of us.”
Melrose played in the NHL as a defenseman with the Winnipeg Jets, Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings from 1979-86. He also played three seasons with Cincinnati in the WHA (1976-79). He later transitioned to coaching, leading teams to Memorial Cup and Calder Cup trophies.
In addition to the Kings, he coached 16 games with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2008-2009 before returning to ESPN.
