Play By Play: Dean Brown on the rivalry between the Sabres and Senators

He never had dreams of being a play-by-play voice or of working in the broadcast business at all.

That is, however where Manitoba-born Dean Brown ended up, and hockey fans can be glad he did.

In this edition of "Play by play," the voice of the Ottawa Senators recounts how he landed on his career path.

It didn't start by sitting in front of the television or recording games into a cassette tape machine. He didn't attend any minor hockey games or sit in the back row of a freezing cold rink. He never called a game by himself into that same old recording device as so many other play-by-play announcers did on their path to the NHL.

Dean, however, is living proof that there is no one certain way of getting to where he is now.

Dean says he got into the business completely by accident.

After a junior football game he played in, Dean was asked by an interviewer if he ever thought of working in radio. Dean said he had no such dreams of being behind the mic - he wanted to be a pro football player.

Once his junior football career was done, it was then that Brown got in touch with the radio station that interviewed him after the game. It was in this moment that Dean's road to eventual play-by-play duties began.

After a move from Manitoba to London, Ontario, and then Ottawa, Brown started calling games in the Canadian Football League for the Ottawa Roughriders. Once the Senators found their way back to the NHL and Ottawa, Brown was asked by his station to apply to the team for the job.

He and current color commentator Gord Wilson were paired up, and are still behind the mic for Senators games to this day.

When it comes to the rivalry with the Sabres, Brown says it all really began in 1999 and, in his words, boiled over in the game that was played between the two in February 2007.

Check out Dean's recounting of that brawl between the teams and his thoughts on the rivalry between Buffalo and Ottawa: