One-of-a-kind: How Daryl “Razor” Reaugh became a hockey icon

Jim Lites was at his carnival barker best back in 1996 when he introduced the Stars’ newest color analyst.

“You’re going to love this guy,” Lites said. “He’s going to be incredible.”

“This guy” was Daryl Reaugh…and yes he has been incredible. Heck, you can call him sapient, capricious, bombastic and didactic. In a word…unique.

“He has such a way with words,” said former Stars coach Ken Hitchcock, who coached Reaugh in junior hockey and helped him eventually land with the Stars. “I have to look things up when I’m watching him, but he finds a way to make it all make sense. He does a fantastic job of explaining things in his own way, but in a way that connects with the fans.”

Reaugh will be honored on Monday by the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto as the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award winner. The honor is given to a broadcaster every year to highlight an exceptional career, and Reaugh definitely qualifies for the award.

“He’s so deserving,” said Lites. “I mean, you look at what he has done here and he’s really helped put us on the map.”

Lites came to Dallas with the Stars in 1993 and has been a huge part of creating the staff that not only built the team, but created a buzz for marketing, sales and status in the business and sports community. In addition to leaving a hiring tree legacy that has gone on to key positions in several major league sports franchises, Lites was a key in connecting owner Tom Gaglardi with GM Jim Nill, who he knew from Detroit.

Yet with all of that to pick from, Lites believes finding Reaugh was one of a kind.

“It’s as good a hire as I’ve ever made in my life,” he said. “And I think I knew it at the time.”

To get to this current place of prominence is an intriguing journey. Reaugh’s gifts are both tangible and ethereal. Growing up in Prince George, British Columbia, he remembers being obsessed with Montreal Canadiens goalie Ken Dryden. The lanky goaltender was a hero in the NHL and a regular face on Hockey Night in Canada, and Reaugh ate it up. His bedroom wall was covered in pictures he had clipped from magazines and newspapers, as well as several he either drew or painted himself.

It was a feeling that Reaugh still marvels at today.

“It’s the craziest thing to me,” he said. “I was six. How does that happen that I was so infatuated with Ken Dryden at that age? I’m watching Chicago and Boston and Montreal, and it could be any of the great players of that era, and I am absolutely taken by Ken Dryden and want to grow up to be him. Do I know I’m going to be 6-foot-4? No, but Dryden was my guy. I could have been 5-8, and Dryden still would have been my guy.”

Again, was something larger working here or did Reaugh will himself to become a fantastic goalie? He was a two-time WHL All-Star with the Kamloops Blazers and was the second goalie selected (42nd overall pick by the Edmonton Oilers) in the 1984 NHL Draft. He dressed 60 games (mostly as a backup) in the 1987-88 season, hanging around the likes of Wayne Gretzky, Grant Fuhr, Mark Messier and that Hall of Fame roster that eventually won the Stanley Cup.

Those experiences were part of the flowing water that shaped the granite of his personality.

He bounced around a bit, getting a year in Finland, as well as stops in several minor league locations and some more NHL games in Hartford. Injuries to his hand and hamstring eventually ended his career, but the hockey gods seemed to have another path already prepared.

Those days of watching Hockey Night in Canada came right back in his six-year-old brain.

“I loved Ken Dryden, but I loved Danny Gallivan just as much,” Reaugh said of the Hall-of-Fame play-by-play man. “So, I think when I did have to adjust, I knew I wanted to be a broadcaster, too.”

He started working with the Dayton Bombers and moved onto Hartford and several regional and national gigs. And in 1996, he joined the Stars.

Working with Ralph Strangis, Dave Strader, Craig Ludwig and Josh Bogorad, he has amassed a trophy case of Lone Star Emmys and various other broadcast awards. Just as important, he has formed bonds with longtime crew members like Jason Walsh, Mark Vittorio, Jon Norton, John Sponsler, Doug Foster and Josh Clark, among others.

“Honestly, that’s the best part of my job, working with all of those guys,” Reaugh said.

Sponsler said having a group that has stayed relatively intact for more than 20 years is rare in the industry, and Reaugh is a big reason for that.

“His preparation is incredible,” Sponsler said. “The amount of material he has every game, he probably has 70 percent more than he ever uses. He will come up with an obscure stat or fact, and then we have an amazing graphic or montage to wow the world. That’s when the team really is clicking, and it feels great.”

Lites said one of the things that strikes him in the thousands of broadcasts he has watched is how much he has learned.

“I chuckle when I’m watching him, because from little insights to big ones, he’s invariably right,” Lites said. “He works so hard at it, and he really wants to inform the viewer and tell the story in his own unique way, but he also really wants to be right about what he’s telling you.”

Reaugh’s brain is an interesting place. He has been known to measure areas of the glass or rink as he ponders rule changes that might help the sport. He is famous for wanting to bisect the red line so as to not disturb the integrity of the center ice logo. He ponders camera angles and broadcast positions to bring the game to the fans with more clarity and excitement.

He studies architecture, art and fashion. He is intrigued by how people think and said he has done a deep dive into “manifesting” - the process of why some people find success.

“Do you know you’re manifesting when you’re 12 years old? No, you’re called a dreamer,” Reaugh said of how he willed his way out of Western Canada and into a fairy tale life. “But every time I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, it was a hockey player. And they would say, `Yeah, but what do you want to fall back on?’ And I would say that professional hockey is my fallback. I had nothing else. I think that always drove me in everything I did.”

That focus has helped him get to “the show” and adjust when fate and injuries handed him a few hurdles. That focus has helped him find a hockey home in a place that welcomes “cowboys” – a group he knew well growing up around ranchers in B.C. That focus has brought him to Monday, where a bunch of people will say nice things about him that will make him feel just a little uncomfortable.

And he’ll find a way to deal with that in a manner that is both jocular and gracious.

“If you want to say anything about me, say that I’m fortunate,” Reaugh concluded when asked about his brain and his skills and his drive that make him a true unicorn. “Because I truly believe that’s actually what I am.”

This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.

Mike Heika is a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on X @MikeHeika.