Big changes are coming to the Los Angeles Kings next season. The team is shaking up its broadcast booth and the new lineup leaves popular play-by-play man Alex Faust without a job.

Faust announced on Twitter Monday that he was told his contract was not being renewed by the team. Instead, the team will adopt a single broadcast that will be simulcast across TV and radio.

Nick Nickerson will handle play-by-play duties. Jim Fox will serve as the analyst. Daryl Evans will be part of the team as well.

Alex Faust was a popular young broadcaster. At just 34-years-old, he had already earned national work from FOX calling college football and basketball as well as Major League Baseball. 

Even people who didn’t like sports became interested in Faust’s work in 2018. That year, the late Alex Trebek mentioned to TMZ that he could see Faust taking over Jeopardy! when he was done.

“The LA Kings sincerely thank Alex Faust for representing the organization and our community with dignity and class over the last six years,” a statement from the Kings reads. “Alex is an extremely talented and passionate broadcaster with a bright future in the NHL and sports on the whole. We wish him the utmost success in the years ahead.”

Los Angeles now joins the Dallas Stars and Carolina Hurricanes as teams employing a simulcast on both television and radio.

The team currently does not have a TV rights holder. It anticipates naming one before the start of the 2023-2024 season. The team’s English language radio call is heard exclusively on the iHeartRadio app.

There are not many people in the sports media industry who get the opportunity to take the broadcast seat of one great voice, let alone two. Joe Davis has that distinction. Not only is he the lead voice for MLB on FOX (taking over for Joe Buck), but he’s also the voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers (taking over for the late, great Vin Scully). For some, the moment of being that person can bring a lot of pressure, but not for Davis. 

Davis was a guest on the New York, New York with John Jastremski podcast before the Yankees-Dodgers series over the weekend and he told Jastremski about being the voice of the Dodgers that he looked at it as more of a responsibility to follow Scully rather than thinking about how he was going to replace him.

“For me, part of what made the job special, part of why I wanted it, the main reason was I wanted it. I didn’t want to look at it as oh my god, I’ve got to replace Vin. I looked at it as how cool of an opportunity, of an responsibility to be the guy who gets that chance to follow the greatest ever.”

As for taking over for Buck, Davis mentioned he grew up watching him and that’s what made sitting in that chair a big moment for him.

“I tried to channel that positively and that was how cool this is instead of ‘oh crap, how about this pressure I’m going to deal with’. I think it is easy to fall into one of those traps and I think that had I done that, I wouldn’t have been able to do my job right and I wouldn’t have been able to bring joy to people by hopefully having fun doing the game. I would have been too in my own head thinking about who I was following.”

Like every MLB announcer this year, Davis has been able to call games with the pitch clock. For him, it has been a very good thing. 

“Best way I can put it is I no longer have to remind myself that I love baseball. There would be times before the pitch clock where those games would just drag to the point where it’s like okay, you love this sport, remember that. I don’t have to remind myself anymore. It’s so much fun every single night because it moves so quickly. I don’t have anywhere to go, it’s not like I need to leave the park. It’s more about what happens while you are there. It’s just an edgier seat, snap of the finger, move forward process.”  

Mike Breen doesn’t like to be thought of as the “voice of the NBA.” Unfortunately for him, a moniker like that comes along with calling nearly two decades’ worth of NBA Finals. 

His signature call, “BANG!” is well-known by fans and players across the league. For someone that doesn’t like being called the voice of the league, you can imagine how he reacted when Front Office Sports’ Michael McCarthy asked if “BANG!” had supplanted Marv Albert’s legendary “YES!”.

“No, I can’t say that,” Breen answered. “As somebody who looked up to Marv and worshiped the way he called the game, and the influence he had. He’ll always, for me, be the voice of the NBA.”

Mike Breen says all he needs is to know that the players and fans enjoy the catchphrase. He is going to make sure that doesn’t change.

“I love the game so much and if it adds to an excitement of a moment, then I did my job. Because that’s the whole idea –  to enhance the moment. I try not to use it too much. I never want to overdo it because then it gets tired.”

Players have responded to Breen’s catchphrase in a variety of ways. He says Jamal Murray has made a habit of hollering it back to him when the Nuggets guard sinks a three-pointer. Steph Curry even named his new signature shoe after the iconic phrase.