Everett Fitzhugh stands alone in NHL, but not among Seattle Kraken

SEATTLE — Everett Fitzhugh had never thrown a fish before. He had certainly never caught one either. But on this new year’s holiday week, the only full-time Black play-by-play radio broadcaster in the NHL was breaking new ground personally at the Pike Place Market.

A week before his birthday, the familiar face to mongers of the establishment looked and sounded like an old pro doing the bit that all the tourists love.

“​​Everybody ropes, everybody rides. You have to fit in sometimes. And listen, I’ve seen it done so many times, and they’re like, ‘Hey, it looks so easy for me.’ It actually was pretty easy,” he said with a *serious hockey guy tone* as if he were a skater coming off the ice, facetiously. “You always want to get a good shift. All the teammates are great. You know, the helping me with the sayings and the tossing of the fish, he sent me a great, great toss. It was so easy it would have been impossible to not catch it. That is how good that toss was.”

At this point, when it comes to representing the Pacific Northwest in hockey, in many ways, he is an old pro, not just a guy doing a bit. In his fifth season calling Seattle Kraken games, Fitzhugh has been with the team since they started and his presence is major in the franchise. Alongside colorman Al Kinisky and studio analyst Mike Benton, they’re as solid as any broadcast outfit in the league.

“The goal was always to get to the NHL, right? Shelly, my wife and I, now we have a 3-year-old son. We came to Seattle thinking this was it, right?” the 37-year-old said while eating lunch at Lowell’s, the popular restaurant that has overlooked Puget Sound since the 1950s. “We’re home, man. Seattle fell in our lap. Literally fell in our lap. We couldn’t have picked a better place.”

After a global pandemic and a tough break in his broadcasting career, Fitzhugh was almost out of the game entirely. He went to Bowling Green State University and chose to do hockey announcing because everyone else wanted to do football and basketball. He ended up with the Cincinnati Cyclones, where it was looking like his final shift.

“It was during COVID. I got furloughed, and [my wife] actually accepted a job in Boston. We were gonna go to Boston. I was gonna get out of hockey,” Fitzhugh recalled. “I thought I was done. I was gonna bartend for work, and I was looking at a PR firm, right? Then her job in Boston during the pandemic got put on hold. Not a week later, Tod [Leiweke] emails me, and it’s like, ‘Hey, I know we spoke before. I know the whole world has gone to hell, but you know, we’re still building and growing for the future. And love to talk to you about joining our team.’ ”

To go from the relative doldrums of the ECHL in Cincinnati to suddenly being involved with one of the most exciting new outfits in the game is quite the ride. On top of that, it represented a sort of prophecy foretold for a kid who grew up with a single mom in Detroit. But as a kid, he made a trip to Mount Rainier that stuck with him.

“​​The Mariners were always my second favorite team because of [Ken] Griffey [Jr.]. I love the Sonics. I love the Seahawks, right? Was it [the] cool colors? It was the teal and the blues and the greens,” Everett said. “We’ve got some cousins who live down on the south side, renting the Kent area. And I can remember coming out here one time when I was eight or nine, and I was blown away by this city.”

Everett’s got no reason to blow smoke about the place he now resides, but it’s funny how life works out like that. 

“My very first time … I remember we hiked up Mount Rainier. I went to a Mariners-Tigers game at the Kingdome. And yep, some unknown shortstop signed a ball for me named Alex Rodriguez, and I didn’t know who the hell he was at the time. And then I went home and played with the baseball. And I’m watching ‘Baseball Tonight’ two or three years later and I have this ‘oh s—’ moment. Like, wait a minute, I had his ball somewhere.”

As the kids say, he manifested it. 

Not only is Seattle now home to the NFL’s Super Bowl champion, but since the Kraken’s founding in 2021, they’ve been one of the most progressive and socially active sports organizations on earth, nevermind in the United States. It’s not just happenstance that they are the lone team with a brotha on the call. We’re talking about a franchise that lists their employees pronouns on their website and plays in a building called Climate Pledge Arena, that is so dedicated to their name that they don’t even use paper in the press box unless absolutely necessary. Seriously.

Formerly KeyArena, following a billion-dollar renovation prior to the Kraken taking the ice, it’s a barn unlike most in North America. It’s not just that one of the league’s most diverse fanbases is in the building, but coming from experience, it’s not always just a matter of the team doing the right thing if you feel unwelcome in the building.

Besides the crowd, our people are all over the place at multiple levels of the organization. Oftentimes, this is the problem when it comes to diversity beyond just numbers. I don’t just mean a security guard, parking attendant or a chef here and there. You’ll see a situation where yeah, the statistics are there overall, but all of us are in the same department or doing something that is effectively not a place where their identity matters at all.

When it comes to actual cultural inclusion and outreach, the Kraken are flat out unsurpassed. Jessica Campbell is an assistant coach, the only woman in the NHL. Their Pride Night jerseys are the stuff of legend in terms of prominence, nevermind being some of the best-looking NHL sweaters I’ve literally ever seen. Their cultural nights go crazy, and I don’t just mean MLK Day.

“I’ve had more Black folks in meetings this week than I have had Black co-workers my entire life,” Everett noted, standing in the broadcast booth before the puck dropped against the Nashville Predators.

Everett beamed, referring to the owner, president and CEO of the team who has been involved with various sports organizations across the U.S. since the 1980s.

“You go to the office — every color of the rainbow, every sexual spectrum, every gender — like, it’s all intentional. [Kraken CEO] Tod Leiweke’s vision was to have a team that represents the city right, like we want our front office to look like the city we represent. We want our front office to represent the change that we want to see in the sport and in the game.

“We want our front office to represent the change that we want to see in the sport and in the game. So, it feels so great going in and, you know, it’s not just numbers. You’ve got people of color in the C suite.”

One of the people in the building is De’aira Anderson, the Kraken’s senior manager of media relations. Raised as a Navy brat due to her dad’s career, her initial love for the game came in a state many miles away: North Carolina. She eventually ended up in Pittsburgh for college and stayed close to hockey via the Penguins. A school advisor noted that she had a theater background, was good with people and she loved pucks.

“In high school, I was like, ‘Oh, it’d be so cool to work for hockey team one day.’ But it was never actually a thought process, because I was going off to college to do marine science, so I was focused on other things,” Anderson recalled. “But then I had someone in my life who was kind of like, ‘I noticed what you’re good at and what you like. Have you ever thought about doing this?’ So, it was around that time when I was like, ‘Oh, okay, maybe I should,’ because I was interning for our men’s ice hockey team at Pitt, doing social media and gameday stuff.”

Funny how things work out when someone gives you a chance.

“It was fun, but I didn’t think it was a like job path for me up until that point. I ended up specializing in PR after I left undergrad, so I went to grad school and Syracuse to get a PR degree, worked for their hockey team up there.

“Then I did the tech PR thing for a little bit. But I always said — I jokingly told my old bosses — I said, ‘Hey, I’ll work here. I love that. You guys are great. [But] If I ever, ever get an opportunity to get an NHL job, I will quit.’ And they’re like, ‘Okay.’ You’re like, ‘Sure, yeah.’ They’re like, ‘This girl…’ ”

Four years later, guess what? Leiweke called and she said peace out to New York City. Now, she’s one of two sistas she is aware of in similar positions in the league. Asia Gholston is the senior vice president for brand marketing for Ilitch Sports + Entertainment, where she in fact does things for both the Detroit Red Wings and the Detroit Tigers.

Anderson and Fitzhugh were hired on the same day.

“Leiweke, he’s just a very intentional person, and he likes the best people,” Anderson said. “Race and gender and all the other things aside, he wants the best people in the room, but he looks for people who may not get looked at normally.

“My hiring with my former boss, at least for me, it felt very lucky. She came from a news background, and she ended up working in PR for a bunch of years. So when they were looking to hire for my role, she was like, I wonder if there’s anyone out there who knows business but also knows hockey. I was like one out of 592 people or something but they were like, “You’re the right person, and it’s awesome, because you’re also bringing more people of color into the sport. Even though you’re a big fan, and that’s not why we’re hiring you, but we feel comfortable, or this place is comfortable for you, so come here and bring more people with you.’ ”

From a marketing standpoint, one of the things the Kraken are trying to do is meet Black folks, specifically where they are. On more than one occasion, folks mentioned the idea of getting out to HBCUs to recruit. That is NOT normal conversation for a professional hockey outfit, nevermind one on the West Coast.

“One of our sayings is ‘make us better.’ And it’s always like, is this the right choice? Are we doing the right thing? Does this make us better? Does this bring more people into the fold, or does this separate people,” Anderson explained. “We celebrate different cultures and different communities every couple of games with these jerseys. A good thing is we have these type of conversations with people like us in the room, so they’re not off in a corner talking. ‘How do we solve the Black people don’t watch hockey problem,’ but there’s no Black people in the room. We don’t have those issues. We’re always in the room. We’re always a part of it, like helping troubleshoot. But I guess the good thing is there’s genuine curiosity to solve it.”

Not to be overly stereotypical, but as a Black American, there are certain things that are undeniable. Like when you hear a name, and you think, “Damn, I gotta meet this brotha.’ After one too many people asked me if I’d met “LB” yet, I’m thinking, who is this dude? When I was finally told what his actual government is, there was no way I was leaving without talking to him.

Lamont Buford is the vice president of entertainment experience and production for the Kraken. The easiest way to describe his countenance is: Panthro. A stout brother whom you do not want to tango with, they genuinely resemble each other — excluding the character’s cartoonish ears. I say this in all seriousness: when a person gets into your sphere with the aura of the Black Thundercat, it’s remarkable.

Perhaps non-coincidentally, what he does is not dissimilar in role in terms of the actual product people see when they’re enjoying a game. 

“Presentation is very similar in most places. Here, we try to focus, though, on the local, focus on our fans, focus on the pride of Seattle fandom,” Buford said, in a suite with his production team, getting ready for one of the dopest pregame introduction sequences you will ever see. “Here in Seattle, they’re known for being loud and they do it in a nice way, and that’s why we have our games here. We just try to create an environment and space for fans to just make a lot of noise.

“Our folks in the control room are world-class, so this is what we do. We are able to plan out things in advance, really focus on how we hear the crowd, how we see the crowd reacting, and if things don’t work, we’re able to go back to the drawing board and find new ways to do some things.”

He’s being humble and direct, but his path has been circuitous from his hometown of Yorktown, Virginia. He worked at but didn’t attend Hampton University, and from there he ended up in Hershey, Pennsylvania, home of the Washington Capitals’ AHL affiliate, the Bears. He created the ever-popular Puckhead for in-game entertainment while rising through the production ranks and now he’s one of the most respected guys in the entire arena.

“I have now gone from coast to coast, going from Hershey to St. Louis with the Blues to Arizona with the Coyotes, and they’re here doing this,” Buford listed. “I’ve had a chance to freelance and other sports, but my primary gig has always been in hockey. But I did not play at all.”

Again, it’s quite the story of how bringing people from different backgrounds can offer something that you wouldn’t otherwise have if you don’t think outside of the box. You don’t have to be a lifelong hockey fan to understand what it takes to bring a meaningful product to the community. There are plenty of folks in the Seattle area who go to games because they enjoy the in-game entertainment, but when he got to Hershey, Buford legit didn’t know the first thing about game ops.

“Funny story, going into our opening night, I helped them open their arena that they’re in now, Giant Center. And I remember going in opening night and going through the whole production meeting, and at the end asking them what was the Zamboni, because they told me I had to go out on the ice.” Buford said, in all seriousness. “After the Zamboni, I was like, ‘I don’t know what that is, man.’ Like, I’ve never knew anything about it. I never thought that I would still be in this sport.”

But much like the mechanic/engineer/pilot of the Thunderian crew, LB has done a little bit of everything while being around long enough to see the change with his own eyes.

“It’s been such a rewarding sport, and honestly, coming from when I first got in back in 2000 into now seeing more and more people of color doing game presentation has been pretty cool to watch,” Buford, 46, said. “You know, there’s days I still pinch myself when I’m walking around like, you know, it’s not even just people that look exactly like us. What I love is that our organization has been intentional with getting all shapes, colors, creeds, you know? It’s really cool to see. This is this one organization I’ve seen more Black people working in it than I have in my entire career in a full-time role, but I’ve also seen so many other ethnicities outside of what you would normally see for hockey, which is amazing.”

This isn’t all to say there isn’t plenty to be done. If we’re being all the way real, the Kraken are a complete outlier in the world of hockey globally. For example, an HBO show about a romantic relationship between two male hockey players sent the entire community into a frenzy. To be clear, the commissioner of the NHL himself, Gary Bettman, who claims he watched “Heated Rivalry” in its entirety in one sitting, technically banned themed jerseys from on-ice wear back in 2023. Some players refused to wear them, and Bettman caved.

The argument being that they were “distractions” from the on-ice product is an incredibly lunkheaded view on the world, never mind the sport. While those themes also extend beyond Pride to military and health related causes, only one of those things does one actually have to make a choice to be a part of. It makes no sense, unless one’s moral values are determined by cowardice.

In this lifetime, there will always be more to do. But as a sport that is probably furthest from its roots with people of color — the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes dates back to the late 1800s — one could say that giving literal voice to those people is a great start.

“We’ve made a lot of strides as a league in terms of embracing differences, right? There’s still a lot more than I think the league can do,” Fitzhugh said. “And I think you see it a lot in terms of this league is unmatched when it comes to women in hockey celebrations and LGBTQ+ celebrations. And you know, I’d like to see a little bit more of that done on the Black history side, on the Latino side, right? Like, on the brown people side. It’s one thing where, I think, as a league they follow our lead, when it seems like to me, anyway, they see the things that Seattle is doing in terms of their coverage, in terms of their promotion, in terms of elevating Black voices and Black faces. It seems like whenever you talk to someone from the league office about DEI initiatives, they always point to Seattle.”

While the U.S. Men’s and Women’s hockey teams are out here making entirely separate reputations to their legacies after both taking home Olympic gold, it’s pretty easy to see why there is so much work to be done on the ice, culture-wise.

Fitzhugh is just one man, and the Kraken are just one team, even if a beacon. But in the year of our lord 2026, the fact that he stands alone says as much about what hasn’t been done as what already has.

The post Everett Fitzhugh stands alone in NHL, but not among Seattle Kraken appeared first on Andscape.