Color of Hockey: ESPN Deportes set for 6th year of NHL broadcasts in Spanish

William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog since 2012. Douglas joined NHL.com in 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, as part of the NHL’s celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, he talks with ESPN Deportes NHL broadcasters Kenneth Garay and Carlos Rossell about their coverage this season and the prospects of more teams broadcasting in Spanish.

Kenneth Garay and Carlos Rossell say they see the reach and impact of ESPN Deportes’ NHL broadcasts in real time during games.

Garay keeps tabs on the social media feeds while he is handling the play-by-play duties and Rossell is providing the analysis.

“I mean, we get people from Colombia, we get people from Argentina, Uruguay, all over Latin America posting and writing to us,” said Garay, whose hockey initiation began in 1996 when he covered the Florida Panthers’ drive to the Stanley Cup Final against the Colorado Avalanche. “What shocked me the most was we have a huge audience in Chile. I asked once on the air why? People wrote back, ‘We’re Oilers fans.’ A lot of people immigrated to Edmonton, worked there, fell in love with hockey in Canada, and retired in Chile.”

Garay and Rossell say they’re proud of the role they play in helping grow hockey within the Hispanic community in the Americas and beyond by anchoring exclusive Spanish-language NHL coverage across the Walt Disney Company-owned linear and digital platforms, including ESPN Deportes and ESPN+.

The network begins its sixth season of hockey in Spanish when the Boston Bruins host the New York Rangers on Sept. 29 (8 p.m. ET; ESPN Deportes, ESPN).

A slate of early-season marquee matchups on Tuesday nights follows, with the New York Islanders at Rangers on Oct. 6 (7:30 p.m. ET; ESPN Deportes, ESPN); Colorado Avalanche at Dallas Stars (8:30 p.m. ET; ESPN, ESPN+, TVAS) on Oct. 13; Tampa Bay Lightning at Vegas Golden Knights (10:30 p.m. ET; ESPN, ESPN+) on Oct. 20; Bruins at Carolina Hurricanes (8 p.m. ET; ESPN, ESPN+) on Oct. 27; and Edmonton Oilers at New Jersey Devils (7:30 p.m. ET; Disney+, HULU, ESPN+) on Nov. 3.

The broadcasts coincide with efforts by the NHL and some of its clubs to attract more Spanish-speaking fans. In 2023, the Golden Knights launched LosVGK, a brand to celebrate and engage their Hispanic fan base, promote the hockey’s growth in Nevada’s Clark County and throughout the team’s television territory and strengthen alliances with the Hispanic community. NHL.com debuted its Spanish language site in 2019-20.

The Los Angeles Kings, Nashville Predators and Golden Knights regularly broadcast games in Spanish on radio. Others, like the Stars, Anaheim Ducks, San Jose Sharks and Washington Capitals, have broadcast select games in Spanish.

But national televised broadcasts are Garay and Rossell’s domain. They deliver almost seamless banter and coverage of the games despite doing it remotely.

Garay, who was who was born in New York and raised in Bucaramanga, Colombia, calls the games from ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut. 

Rossell, the son of Nicaraguan and Guatemalan parents, chimes in with analysis from a setup at his home in New York City, when he’s not coaching hockey at Manhattan’s Sky Rink at Chelsea Piers.

“There’s obviously a bit of obviously pre-production dialogue, but the relationship, you know, sometimes you just have that,” said Rossell, who began broadcasting hockey in Spanish more than 25 years ago. “You can feel each other's cadence. You know the tone that Kenny uses when he's speaking and when he stops speaking. I know automatically that's my time to just throw my two cents in. Like any other live show, you'll step on one another here and there. Hopefully, it doesn't happen too much.”

Garay and Ross discussed the upcoming 2026-27 NHL season, ESPN’s Spanish language hockey coverage and the prospect of more NHL teams broadcasting games in Spanish in a Q&A with NHL.com.

What storylines will you be following this season? 

GARAY: "I'm looking forward to seeing how the Rangers do, if they can come back. They had a horrible year (last season). Canada hasn't won (the Stanley Cup) for many years, and I think it's about time we see a Canadian team make it to the end line. And let's see how the Florida Panthers do. They couldn't do the three-peat. That was very hard and they had a lot of injuries."

ROSSELL:  "There are a lot of good storylines out there, but for me it’s the youth movement; the skill level that we see present-day combined with the maturity of these younger players. When you look at kids like (Sharks center Macklin) Celebrini, that kid plays as if he’s been around for a decade. (Islanders defenseman) Matthew Schaefer, another kid who looks like he’s been around for a decade. The League is getting younger, obviously, but we can’t forget (Capitals forward) Alex Ovechkin, he hit the 900-goal mark last season. It will be interesting to see what he does this season. That team in Washington has changed a little bit."

What’s the biggest challenge to broadcasting an NHL game in Spanish?

GARAY: “You’ve got to make sure, because it's an ever-growing audience and there's people hopping on the bus constantly, that you’re as instructive as possible. I think Carlos especially does a great job in trying to give a class every now and then. Like when there is a power play or when there’s a penalty, it’s good to remember to say, ‘Hey, by the way, those who are new to hockey, a power play is a two-minute infraction in which one team plays with one less player.’ There are a bunch of rules -- the trapezoid, the blue paint (goal crease). It’s good to just kind of sneak them in there without getting into so much detail because the actual game is the main thing.”

ROSSELL: “The terms that everyone is accustomed to using in English in hockey, we quickly learned there was no literal way to say in Spanish, so therefore we had to create what we were doing. So when Kenny and I started talking about these things, as we started diving into the terminology and the tradition of the game in English, I started to share these terms with Kenny and now we use them on the air. We’ll say it in English and explain it in Spanish. For example, ‘Head on a swivel.’ I said to Kenny, ‘How do we say that?’ Kenny goes, ‘I’ve never used any interpretation of swivel in Spanish in my life.’  So he’ll say in Spanish, ‘Coach, head on a swivel, what does that mean?’ and we’ll roll with it that way.”

Based on viewer feedback, what do you think the appetite is for hockey within the Hispanic community in the Americas and beyond?

GARAY: “I think appetite for hockey in Latin America is strong and getting stronger. I think that we have impacted people, and I feel a sense of accomplishment because, at the end of the day, the whole idea is to entertain with hockey for many years to come. I think we're building a path, we're building a way to do that.”

ROSSELL: “It has absolutely grown by multiples because you just didn’t see Latino kids playing hockey as much as they do now. I think we’ve helped but so have things like the (Amerigol) LATAM Cup. Those guys have done an amazing job with that, and it’s huge. Several of our kids from New York were in it.”

Three NHL teams regularly broadcast games in Spanish and several others do it on a select basis. Do you think more teams will do it in the future? 

GARAY: “I think it'd be great. It's way easier to do nowadays. You don't even need to run time on a radio station. You could do streaming on a website. The thing is, don't expect huge numbers overnight because it doesn't happen overnight. No, it has to be a consistent effort. Don't do it just for the sake of saying you have a Spanish broadcast and forget about it. Try to do it consistently, invest in it, and things will happen.”

ROSSELL: “It makes sense to me in markets that are heavily Latino-based because I think you could sell the advertising. We (ESPN) are uniquely different in that we do have a full season of Spanish broadcasts. That provides at least the groundwork and hopefully establishes the foundation for other teams to hear us and say, ‘Whoa, OK, we could do this, too.’”