Ben McDonald and Kevin Brown have spent seven years broadcasting MLB games together for the Baltimore Orioles’ regional network MASN (Mid-Atlantic Sports Network), with the latter calling play-by-play and the former providing color commentary.
So when the pair was tasked with promoting next week’s NHL opening night coverage during Wednesday night’s National League wild-card game on ESPN, Brown did what he does best — needle his friend and partner about whether McDonald would be tuning in.
In baseball circles, McDonald’s answer was expected: “There is zero chance I’ll be watching; I’m just gonna be honest with you,” he said.
However, the social media response from some hockey fans was not. As the conversation unfolded in the top of the fifth inning between the San Diego Padres and Chicago Cubs, users on X almost immediately took McDonald’s words as a slight. The comment went viral, with “SportsCenter” anchor and ESPN hockey coverage member John Buccigross among those piling on.
Zero is also how many postseason innings Ben McDonald pitched in his MLB career. https://t.co/LhynoYjQW9
— BucciOT.Com (@Buccigross) October 1, 2025
On Thursday morning, Brown and McDonald separately told The Athletic that they had been chatting in the booth before the game about their offseason plans, with McDonald — an avid hunter and Louisiana native — making it clear that he would be taking a break from the game.
“I know when hunting season comes Ben won’t be watching any sport or TV,” Brown said, “he will be up in a deer stand anywhere.”
McDonald reiterated Brown’s sentiment that it was two friends messing around and that, when he’s done after six months and 140 games in the booth, he’ll decamp somewhere without cell service. He added that he didn’t mean to anger anyone.
“This was a joke,” McDonald told The Athletic. “I respect the hockey players, I love them.”
The pair is expected to address any social media outrage during tonight’s winner-take-all Game 3 between the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres. Like most of their banter, it will be light-hearted.
McDonald and Brown are joined in the booth with ESPN’s Jessica Mendoza for the wild-card series. Neither man is a full-time ESPN employee.
Buccigross declined to comment when reached by The Athletic. In addition to his role on “SportsCenter,” Buccigross delivers play-by-play and serves as an in-studio host for select NHL games, as well as calling NCAA Frozen Four games.
ESPN also declined to comment through a spokesperson. The network is one of two primary U.S. national broadcast partners with the NHL. The other is Turner Sports. The combined worth of those partnerships is reportedly $4.5 billion.
This will be the fifth season of those seven-year deals. ESPN annually broadcasts regular-season and Stanley Cup playoff games, rotating with Turner Sports to air the Stanley Cup Final. Select games, including the final, air on ABC as part of the deal with ESPN, which also has exclusive rights to more than 1,000 out-of-market games on ESPN+ each season.
ESPN/ABC aired 48 NHL regular-season games during the 2024-25 season, averaging 584,000 viewers — a 12 percent decrease from the 666,000 viewers in the 2023-24 season.
The NHL was eager to partner with ESPN after its previous lengthy deal. Following the 2004-05 season, which was lost to a lockout, the league selected NBC Sports as its exclusive broadcast partner.
However, during that time, the NHL felt its presence on ESPN programming diminish. The league believed that returning to ESPN, which had broadcast games from the 1980s through the 2004-05 season, would garner placement on the network’s shoulder programming, such as its morning talk shows.
Reality hasn’t quite worked out that way, at least to the satisfaction of hockey fans who regularly criticize ESPN for not having the NHL be more visible outside of game broadcasts and “SportsCenter” highlights.
The 2025-26 NHL season kicks off on Tuesday with a trio of games, all on ESPN: Chicago Blackhawks versus Florida Panthers, Pittsburgh Penguins versus New York Rangers and Colorado Avalanche versus Los Angeles Kings.
“It was not a bang on hockey at all,” McDonald said of his “zero chance” comment. “It was following up on a conversation we had before the game about what we are doing after this? I said I’m disappearing off the grid to hunt.”
— The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch contributed to this report.
(Photo: Diamond Images via Getty Images)