The Vegas Golden Knights will feature new faces on their broadcasting team this upcoming season, and it’s a massive overhaul of what was once the norm.
Rinkside reporter Alyson Lozoff and host Nick Gismondi are out after being with the team for the past two seasons. Analyst and former player Brad May is also out. Incoming to replace them are former SportsNet host Daren Millard, former NHL goalie Mike McKenna, and new rinkside reporter Stormy Buonantony.
Millard, a Brandon, Manitoba native, spent the past 20 years with SportsNet in Canada and a well-respected member in the hockey media industry. He was also the host for the Golden Knights’ expansion draft in 2017.
McKenna returns to Las Vegas after a long, topsy-turvy end to an NHL career. A former sixth-round pick in 2002, McKenna made his professional debut with the Las Vegas Wranglers in 2005-06 in the ECHL. McKenna played for a record 13 AHL franchises in his career, and played for three different NHL teams (Ottawa, Vancouver and Philadelphia) last season. He was the seventh different goaltender used by the Flyers in 2019. The veteran netminder retired on Tuesday. He will be the lead analyst on the pregame, intermission and postgame shows along with Millard.
Buonantony is a Las Vegas native. She spent the past two years as a broadcast reporter for the Carolina Panthers in the NFL, and spent three years as a reporter for the Mountain West Conference. She will be the rinkside reporter conducting interviews before games and during intermissions.
🚨LIFE UPDATE🚨 This #VegasBorn girl is coming home! I could not be more excited & honored to officially confirm I have accepted a position with the NHLs Vegas @GoldenKnights as the team’s Rinkside Reporter & “Knight Life” Host on AT&T SportsNet. More⤵️ https://t.co/gGxQWkJaba pic.twitter.com/tIosc1uAdR
— Stormy Buonantony (@StormBuonantony) August 29, 2019
The Golden Knights also announced Daren Eliot, the team’s vice president of hockey programming and facility operations, will be an analyst for select games throughout the season.
It’s a fresh start for the VGK broadcasting group. The in-game duties will remain the same with Dave Goucher and Shane Hnidy on TV, but things will be different when viewers turn the TV to AT&T SportsNet this fall.