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The NHL is back at ESPN beginning next season with the league and network agreeing to a 7-year deal. Which can only mean one thing: one of the best theme songs in all of sports will be back in heavy rotation.
This sucker wastes no time blasting your vertebrae like someone playing a particularly aggressive brand of marimbas. Not so sure there's another sports sounder that gets straighter to the point.
ESPN's NHL theme was written by Bob Christianson, and debuted in 1992. Christianson had previously written a bunch of music for the channel.
"When ESPN first started, a good part of the music that was on ESPN was mine, maybe even the majority," he said. ""I had baseball, NCAA basketball, NBA basketball, hockey.
The jam took about 25 estimated hours and is one that Christianson said he's happy with, which raises a really interesting question of what it's like for a composer to hear their music leading into a Rutgers-Indiana or Kings-Sun game and get depressed because they don't like it.
Steve Levy asked on Twitter if its one of the top-3 of all-time, which seems a bit too bold at first, but when you dwell on it, it might be a real contender for the top spot.
Hard not to get excited about hearing this with regularity over the next several years and cracking a secret smile.