Jason Kelce is swapping his Monday Night Countdown desk for a seat at ice level.<\/p>\n
ESPN announced on Monday<\/a> that Kelce will serve as a special correspondent for Sunday\u2019s NHL Stadium Series at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, where the Lightning will host the Boston Bruins at 6:30 p.m. ET. The network is positioning him in what it\u2019s calling the \u201cBest Seat in the House,\u201d an ice-level location where he\u2019ll rotate through special guests during the broadcast.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Kelce will be working with the on-site studio crew of Steve Levy, Mark Messier, and P.K. Subban, all of whom are covering the event throughout the weekend. Sean McDonough will handle the play-by-play duties with Ray Ferraro alongside him in the booth, while Kevin Weekes and Emily Kaplan will serve as rinkside reporters.<\/p>\n For Kelce, this gig isn\u2019t as out of left field as it might appear. He grew up playing hockey in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where he scored 21 goals and added 15 assists in 27 games during his senior year<\/a> at Cleveland Heights High School.\u00a0 Throughout his 13-year career with the Eagles, he frequently showed up at Flyers games<\/a> \u2014 including Philadelphia\u2019s 2018 Stadium Series matchup against the Penguins \u2014 and even played in a men\u2019s league game in Jacksonville<\/a> last October.<\/p>\n On Sunday, he\u2019ll return to the scene where he played his final NFL game \u2014 a 32-9 NFC Wild Card playoff loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers \u2014 but he\u2019ll do in a totally different environment, as the NHL is building the rink inside a 240-foot-long, air-conditioned structure to protect the ice from Tampa\u2019s heat and humidity.<\/p>\n ESPN\u2019s production includes aerial coverage, Skycam, on-ice skatecam, and Mindfly chest cameras on referees, along with mic\u2019d up players and virtual graphics. The network is clearly treating this as a major event, and adding Kelce \u2014 who joined ESPN\u2019s Monday Night Countdown in May 2024 and has quickly become one of its most visible personalities\u2014 might just get more eyeballs on hockey during a football-less Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jason Kelce is swapping his Monday Night Countdown desk for a seat at ice level. ESPN announced on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5105],"tags":[95,5,12047,189,4,14490,540,92,5168,5167],"class_list":["post-432163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa-bay-lightning","tag-boston-bruins","tag-hockey","tag-jason-kelce","tag-lightning","tag-nhl","tag-stadium-series","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-bay-lightning","tag-tampabay","tag-tampabaylightning"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115971800718653057","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}