38 bid to be Thrashers voice of Philips Arena

The next hockey voice of Philips Arena stepped to the microphone Wednesday night and introduced the teams, announced a goal and warned the fans to beware of errant pucks.

But there was no ice, no goal and no players. And on this night, the announcers were the ones wearing the numbers.

It was a tryout, held in an upstairs room of a Marietta Street sports bar and grill, with only three judges’ opinions separating the aspiring announcers from 41 performances every regular season in front of thousands of Thrashers fans.

The 38 contestants included a middle school language-and-arts teacher, a receptionist at a post-production company, a chiropractor and laser hair-removal spa owner, a lobbyist and an actor with an improvisational comedy group.

And then there was Bryson Freeman, who came to Stats sports bar Wednesday night but did not compete.

“He has a great voice,” Andy Freeman said of his 2-month-old son, “but he can’t read the names.”

Some of the adult contestants struggled with that, too. One called the reigning NHL MVP Oh-va-chicken; most North Americans pronounce it Oh-vetch-kin. Other contestants butchered the pronunciations on hometown — though not homegrown — players.

“I have to practice my Russian and Canadian accent,” said Marina Wesner, who gave it her best shot.

She was one of two women to try out, in an atmosphere that combined the all-ears-on-you stress of a cappella singing with the over-the-top emoting of karaoke. Qiana Nichol Harps of Atlanta compared it to one of her day jobs, being a model.

“I didn’t want to stumble on my words. You don’t want to fall on the runway,” Harps said.

Some contestants did stumble, but the judges never cut anyone off by clanging their gong.

“I couldn’t bring myself to do it,” the Thrashers’ Peter Sorckoff said. “They were working so hard.”

The three finalists are professional performers and sounded right at home.

That was natural for song-and-dance man Dean Balkwill, who moved to Atlanta five years ago from Regina, Saskatchewan.

“When I got here I was like a Canadian out of water,” said Balkwill, who cured his homesickness by joining an adult hockey league, only to cut his lip and learn he should have gotten health insurance first.

Shaffee Abraham has played the game, too. He hails from Hockey Town, otherwise known as Detroit, and now goes by just his first name while hosting a morning show on Atlanta’s WKLS-FM, Project 9-6-1.

“I’d like to tell all my buddies I grew up with I made it to the NHL,” Abraham said.

Matthew Stanton is the odd man out, a Floridian — “We didn’t even have a baseball team” — who didn’t fall in love with hockey until he discovered an ECHL team while attending Florida State. He does voiceovers, commercials and theater.

Each finalist will work one exhibition game, with the winner filling the vacancy created when former announcer Steve Craig took a job with a New York radio station.

The Thrashers also lost their radio color man, former player Jeff Odgers, who returned to Saskatchewan.

“I’m planning to bring in a galaxy of guest stars,” play-by-play man Dan Kamal said. “No auditioning, though.”