Fail.  Fail.  Fail.  A thousand times fail.

I would trade Jack Edwards for this guy in a second. Basically he reminds me of all the other guys that do play by play...nerdy types that never played the game so its hard to compare them. There are two horrible annoucers though..the guys in Pitt and Buffalo. They’re brutal.

He quickly becomes irritating but not as dumb as the NBC guys.  There is only one verbal master of the play by play today and that is Doc Emrick, without peer with his true play by play style and mastery of the English language.

Beninati is awful. His voice alone is like listening to fingernails on a chalk board. And his commentary makes me cringe. I will never forget a Thrashers game Beninati called in the 2006-2007 regular season wherein he called a hat trick a triple. This man has been the bane of my Versus (and OLN) watching experience. I concur with HockeyJoe: Fail.

Despite being a Pens fan, I watch most Caps games. Beninati makes the color guy with the annoying voice (whose name I’m misplacing--I often mute the TV and listen to music) look impartial and fair. Nothing, though, compares to the stupidity of San Jose’s horrible, horrible announcers.

Beninati conducts doing play-by-play on VS. as if he’s doing a hockey talk show that, inconveniently for him, has a game going on underneath it. 

That said, the games I’ve caught him doing for the Caps he’s been surprisingly good.  I’d like to blame VS. for Beninati being so poor in his national broadcasts but, other PBP men who have handled their work on VS. haven’t had the same inability in dealing with the network filler and promo nonsense.

Horrible, horrible, horrible.  The versus coverage of the Pitt - Philly series was the worst in sports history.  No exageration.

The Beninati/Loughlin duo is quite possibly the worst in the Eastern Conference. Caps games are unbearable.

C’mon, Ted. You finally have a product worth showcasing. Don’t you think it’s time to upgrade?

As far as Beninati on VS, he seems to have dialed the ‘Suck Meter’ back a bit, say from 10 to 9.5.

To make it feel like Beninati, you should have tried to cram in as many sponsor plugs as possible, and remind us that 5:30 seperates us from ‘Hockey Central’, as if any of us care about that over the game.

I’ll give it to him that he’s enthusiastic, but my goodness does he grate over the course of 60 minutes. The eastern finals broadcast was beyond terrible.

Beninati is horrible.  He has no character, and he never diverges from the same call when somebody scores a goal. 

“Crosby! Goal!”
“Ovechkin! Goal!”
“Brooks Laich! Goal!”

I can’t stand hearing his voice.  I dread watching every game on Versus if his voice is there for the intro.  Maybe (OK, definitely) I’m spoiled for having Mike Lange my whole life.  But this guy is a joke and is turning people off from watching games.

I would rather slam my balls in a car door than listen to Beninati for another second.

He sucks. That is all there is to say.

If Verses was serious about getting talent, they would find a way to hire Gary Thorne that did play-by-play for ESPN when they covered hockey. The was always solid.

My.  Where is the love?  Maybe it’s because I’m somewhat of a Caps fan and hearing him usually means seeing Ovechkin, but while I consider him a rather typical network pbp man, I don’t think he’s “horrible.” To me, horrible should be reserved for guys like Jeff Rimer in Columbus (arrgggh!  Even switching to the radio for the Jackets doesn’t help, I can’t understand Matthews) or Paul Steigerwald in Pittsburgh.  Now they are truly horrible.  Joe B., average at best and worst.

And yes Kevin...Jack Edwards is a superb tv pbp man.

If it is the playoffs, 1 minute left on the clock, the goalie is pulled, and you are wishing your mother a Happy Mother’s Day- you have to go.

The absolute worst.  Everytime I head him say “Man Power Advantage” I wanna jump out of a window.  Get some real hockey people in there to do the job.

I could not disapprove of anything as much as I do Joe Beninati. I consider everything else about the NHL on Versus to be at the very least tolerable except for Beninati. He must go.

Boooooooooooolzzzzzzeyyyyyyyeee!

I admire Beninati’s enthusiasm.  I also have a few friends who have met Joe and they say the guy is an absolute diehard hockey fan.

I dislike the way he diverges too much from typical hockey jargon.  I don’t know if he’s trying to be original and come with his own trademark or what.  Since when did we start referring to goaltending equipment as “paraphernalia”?  And when I hear him call a powerplay a “man power advantage”, it sounds like a bad Village People video or something (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

I just think Versus - owned by Comcast - could do better than him.  Someone mentioned Jack Edwards and I completely agree.

What’s Gary Thorne doing these days?  Panger, maybe?

Even before the playoffs, I found him irritating.

His ignorance of hockey rules is confounding—there was a five minute boarding call at some point (Philly vs. Montreal?) where he had to ask Darren Elliot what happens at the end of the penalty.  Does the player come out of the box or do they have to wait for a whistle?

I would expect a “pro” announcer with 13 years experience would a)know how such a penalty works or b)shut his mouth and ask for clarification off the air.

The constant Timonen and Coburn fluffing during the ECF was grating.  How many times do we have to hear about their injuries and what a great loss they were to the Flyers?  We get it already.

Although not a Beninati-specific gripe, the reminders that there will be an intermission show—duh!—are ridiculous.  Several times there were whistles with scrums and penalties and we had to hear about what Keith Jones was going to talk about in ten minutes.  Ugh.

Luckily for me, I can mute the TV and put Mike Lange on the radio.  Beninati is… well… it’s hard to describe.  I can’t say I like him.  I can’t say I dislike him.  He’s merely horrifyingly non-descript (much like Pens TV play-by-play man Paul “Still jealous of Mike Lange” Steigerwald).  I know Gary Thorne is going Orioles games for MASN, and I think he still does the occasional college hockey game for ESPN.  That said, whenever his contract is up, Versus should throw a bunch of money at him. At the very least, they should elevate Jack Edwards to the #2 slot and dump Beninati.

I guess I’ve watched more Beninati games with the sound muted and music playing than I realized.  Indeed, the things everyone is describing are irritating.  The Mother’s Day thing is outrageous.  It reminds me of another Capitals announcer, the original radio voice, Ron Webber.  One afternoon I was listening to a game and he missed a goal because he was rambling on about the Caps’ shot total for the season...something about a new record.  But, he was beloved by Caps’ fans.

I’ll have to disagree with the Jack Edwards love here - the guy is a huge blowhard and a phony.

He’s able to cover it up, for the most part, when he’s working for VS. - however, as the Bruins PBP guy for NESN...he plays to the Boston audience in a glaring and borderline unprofessional way.

I think Joe did a fine job.  I like his style, his colorful vocabulary is a breath of fresh air.  People talk about him asking those questions to Darren Eliot, you do realize that some of the best play-by-play announcers do that for the audiences sake, not for their own, right?  If Joe was really curious, in order to not sound like an idiot, he could write it down or ask him on a commercial or something.  The game’s best PBP guy Doc Emrick does this all the time.  He serves up a beachball for Eddie Olczyk or Chico Resch (Devils games) to answer for the sake of the people unfamiliar to the game, not for him, he already knows the answer, obviously.

I think Joe did a fine job, he’s better than Jack Edwards and Boston homeristic nonsense.