The rise of Jennifer Botterill, the breakout media star of this NHL season (2024)

Jennifer Botterill shook her head.

She had just made an impassioned on-air speech about the importance of player safety in the aftermath of the controversial incident in May between Washington’s Tom Wilson and New York Rangers forwards Pavel Buchnevich and Artemi Panarin. And now, her co-analyst on Sportsnet’s “Hockey Night in Canada” was comparing Wilson’s actions to a “noogie.”

What resulted was a passionate, authentic debate on national television, with last year’s HNIC breakout star Kevin Bieksa on one side and this year’s newest star, Botterill, on the other.

“What I loved about that whole exchange is that she didn’t defer to him,” Sportsnet’s Jeff Marek said. “She’s pretty new on ‘Hockey Night’ and she’s pretty new at our shop and normally, like in sports, some people sort of defer to the vets. … But, she’s walked in, and she’s not deferring. She’s not saying, ‘Well, yeah, you have a point,’ and she’s not just siding with someone to make it more comfortable. She’s got her opinions and she’s happy to dig in her heels.”

Botterill, one of the most successful players of her era, has transitioned smoothly to a broadcasting career. This season, she got widespread exposure through her work with Sportsnet, and she could be on to even bigger things soon.

“Media and broadcasting is something that I absolutely love,” Botterill told The Athletic. “The connection with the game and the opportunity to potentially impact fans of the game and those who love hockey to make it even better for them is something I really enjoy.”

Botterill, 42, joined the “Hockey Night in Canada” crew this season after two years as an analyst with MSG Networks. At Sportsnet, she had a few trial shows on the network’s pregame show “Hockey Central” and quickly worked her way up to “Wednesday Night Hockey” and ultimately to “HNIC” through the regular season and up to the conference finals.

Technically a freelance broadcaster, she isn’t scheduled to be part of Sportsnet’s Stanley Cup Final coverage. And where she lands next season is still a question. But, the media landscape is wide open right now with TNT and ESPN filling out their rosters on the U.S. side, which should give Botterill plenty of opportunities in the future.

It’s been a long and successful path in hockey, one that culminated in making Botterill’s segments must-watch television this season. And in many ways, she’s doing on Sportsnet, what she’s always done: excel.

And that is reflected in her decorated playing career. Botterill won 17 gold medals for Canada, including three at the Olympics and five world championships. Her name is all over the Harvard hockey record books, and she is the only player to win the Patty Kazmaier Trophy as the top player in women’s college hockey twice. It’s a 14-year career primed for Hockey Hall of Fame enshrinement.

“She is a star, there’s no question about it,” said Katey Stone, the longtime Harvard women’s hockey coach who recruited Botterill more than two decades ago. “She’s a wonderful human being and what you’re seeing on TV is authentic. I think that’s what people gravitate toward. They understand how sincere she is, and they know she’s been there, done that at every possible level of hockey she could.”

In Winnipeg, there weren’t many conversations at the Botterill family dining table that didn’t revolve around sports.

Her mother, Doreen, was a two-time Olympic speed skater. Her dad, Cal, is a well-known sports psychologist who also played hockey. And her brother, Jason, won three world junior championships for Canada, played professionally and has worked in NHL front offices for over a decade, with stops as the general manager of the Buffalo Sabres, and now as assistant GM in Seattle.

“We had a very athletic family, and sport was a big part of both my mom and my dad’s lives,” Botterill said. “So, it was just a part of the culture that we grew up in. And I think they taught my brother and I to pursue excellence in everything that we did.”

Botterill said her parents created a supportive, positive environment, and never put pressure on her or Jason to play hockey or aspire to represent Canada at the highest level.

“There was unconditional support from them,” she said. “But growing up in that environment, it was more that they just encouraged us to be involved in sport. … And I think they provided the right source of motivation and inspiration for doing things for the right reason, along with that drive for excellence.”

Botterill tried many sports but ultimately chose to focus on hockey, and rose quickly through the game. She debuted for the national team at the 1997 3 Nations Cup, and cracked Canada’s roster for the first Olympics to include women’s hockey in 1998. At 18, she was the youngest player on the team.

Team USA won the historic first gold medal at the Nagano Games. Botterill, still just a teenager, returned home before committing to play college hockey at Harvard.

Stone remembers the first time she walked into Harvard’s locker room during Botterill’s freshman year. All of the players were partially geared up waiting for the coaches, and Botterill was in her chair, helmet on, gloves at her knees, ready to get on the ice.

“I walk in and there’s Jen, a fresh little freshman, and she’s sitting up extremely straight in her chair … and just looking like, ‘I’m ready,’” Stone said. “I never forgot it because I thought, all right, this is a special individual.”

And she was.

At Harvard, Botterill led the Crimson to their first-ever national title in her freshman year, was a four-time All-American and a two-time national player of the year and ended her career with 157 goals and 340 points in 113 games (and an honours degree in psychology). She still holds several NCAA and Harvard records.

“She was clutch,” Stone said. “Jen was not just skilled, but she was always prepared, there was never a doubt that she was going to be ready. … When we needed something, we needed a goal, we needed something done, she was there, and she always delivered.

“She was a gift to our program.”

At the international level, Botterill was a five-time world champion for Canada and a two-time MVP of the tournament, while also winning three silver medals. After the disappointment in 1998, Botterill was a key member of Canada’s dominant run at the Olympics, with gold medals in 2002, 2006 and 2010.

A few weeks after the 2010 Games in Vancouver — where she got the assist on Marie-Philip Poulin’s winning goal in the gold-medal game — Botterill announced her retirement.

“I loved my time as a competitive athlete, but in some ways, it’s very all-consuming,” Botterill said. “I look back, and was super fortunate, but I did feel this interest and intrigue and excitement about having adventures and having the energy and the capacity to focus on some new challenges with some new adventures in my life.”

Marek was being a (self-proclaimed) prima donna.

He had just finished working a doubleheader of games on “Wednesday Night Hockey” and was in the makeup room when he made a comment about the makeup removing wipes irritating his skin.

Sitting nearby was Botterill, who had just worked her first Wednesday show, and her first show with Marek.

“I had a throwaway little comment, right? So, I don’t think about this for a second,” Marek said. “Then the next week, Jen shows up and she comes over to me and she goes, ‘Here try these, they’re a lot easier on your skin.’”

A long-time broadcaster and host at Sportsnet, Marek was surprised by the gesture.

“I shouldn’t be surprised at this,” Marek said, “because she’s grown up playing on teams, but I think that she really gets the idea — and usually it takes sort of newer broadcasters on the team a while to understand this — that this is a team, and that everybody needs to take care of each other and trust each other. And even if it’s just tiny little things like giving the prima donna some different wipes so his sensitive skin won’t feel as burned.

“That’s Botterill, man. That’s Jennifer.”

Being a good teammate is just one element that has made Botterill successful as a player and a broadcaster. And of course, she’s not completely new to TV.

Botterill had only just retired when she was approached to do work for the Women’s World Championships with TSN, a longstanding broadcast partner of Hockey Canada.

Botterill made her broadcast debut in 2011 and worked for the network for several tournaments. She covered the 2014 Sochi Games with CBC, and became a co-host for Sportsnet’s “Hometown Hockey” before the network went down to one host, Tara Slone.

In 2018, Botterill joined her former Harvard teammate and Olympic rival A.J. Mleczko as an analyst with MSG Networks. With Mleczko based in Boston and Botterill in Toronto — and both women with young families — a full slate of games would have been too much travel and time. So, the duo split the role.

“It was almost like somebody had pre-planned it,” said Jeff Filippi, the senior vice president of programming and executive producer at MSG Networks. “They were teammates, and they won a national championship, and then they were rivals in the Olympics and World Championships, so they had this great connection. And if we couldn’t get one, getting both was actually sort of a cool thing.

“We thought it was just such a stroke of serendipity and it worked out tremendously,” he added. “It really exceeded our expectations because they were both so good at their job and Jen just did a great job for us.”

Her role as a studio analyst was different from her previous work between the benches as a rinkside reporter or host on “Hometown Hockey.” At MSG, Botterill started to hone her skills and shine.

“I think one of the important qualities I always think of and tell people who want to do this is, you sort of have to be likable and believable. And I think Jen has both of those qualities in spades,” Filippi said. “She comes across as someone you’d like to hang out with, you know? She’s very friendly and outgoing and obviously knows the game very well and has the credentials to back it up. So, when you put all those qualities together, it will usually create somebody who’s pretty successful in doing what she did as an analyst.”

Botterill could have still been with the network this year, covering the Islanders’ run to the conference finals. But, the COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to her travel, first during last year’s bubble, and then during the entirety of the 2020-21 season.

With her work stalled, Botterill’s agent, Brant Feldman, worked the phones, and just before the start of this season, he got her an opportunity to fill in on a handful of “Hockey Central” pregame shows with Caroline Cameron.

“They sounded very intrigued in terms of me coming in, but I hadn’t worked with them in the past in this capacity,” Botterill said. “It was just some ‘Hockey Central’ shows to start with perhaps some opportunities down the road.”

Rob Corte, Sportsnet’s vice president of Live Events and NHL Production, said the network had been keeping Botterill on their radar during her work with MSG, and that her first few shows made it “really easy” to keep her on air.

“It was clear right away that she was exceptional,” he said. “She has presence. It’s little things that are great broadcasting techniques, like her posture. She sits up straight, and you laugh, but those are very important things that allow her to project her voice. And when she comes on right away, you take notice, just by her physical presence. And then of course, when she starts to speak, you put the two of them together, and it’s a home run.”

Botterill turned that audition into regular appearances on the pregame show, working up to “Wednesday Night Hockey” with Marek and ultimately “Hockey Night in Canada.” And like Bieksa last year, Botterill quickly endeared herself to colleagues and fans.

She turned into the breakout media star of 2021.

“Both Kevin and Jennifer have been fantastic for us in the short time they’ve been a part of the team,” Corte said. “It’s rare, especially on social media and Twitter in particular, to have more positive than negative reactions. And Jennifer certainly is one of those rarities, where it seems like most of the comments about her and her performance are positive, which that in itself would tell you something.”

Many intelligent and articulate athletes have struggled to make a successful transition from playing to broadcasting. But what has set Botterill apart from her peers is her ability to break down the game in a complex way, while making it easy to digest. When Botterill speaks, viewers typically learn something. And that’s not always easy to do.

“It really doesn’t help matters if our analyst says, ‘That was a great pass by Smith,’ because the fan at home is going to see that was a great pass by Smith,” Filippi said. “It’s really the why, the how, what set it up. It’s the next level analysis, but also done in sort of a simple way. Don’t talk in hockey jargon, don’t talk above the audience. Talk to the audience and try to help them understand what they want to learn. And Jen does a great job of that.”

Having played the game for so long, Botterill said she makes it a priority to use her knowledge and experience to add to the viewers’ experience and understanding of the game.

“Maybe it’s something that they didn’t notice, or something I could provide a little more detail or a different perspective on,” she said. “I guess my goal is to always make our segments as interesting as possible and to make the game even better to watch for everyone that follows.”

Former Team Canada captain Campbell-Pascall knows Botterill well from their playing days.

“I’m just never surprised at anything with her. Whatever she sets her mind to, she can do it, you know?” she said. “But, who you see on TV, on ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ right now, that’s Jennifer Botterill. There’s no other version.

“I still think there’s more personality that’ll come out when she just gets more comfortable, and that just takes time. It’s a big show. It’s a big stage, right? It comes with a lot of pressure and she’s doing an amazing job, but I think she’ll grow even more.”

Even as a new member of the Sportsnet crew, Botterill is a calming presence on set, Marek said. Regardless of what happened in games, she never panicked and always was the most prepared person in the room.

“One of the things about Jennifer is, I get the sense that she approaches every show, probably like she approaches every game,” Marek said. “She works hard. She’s authentic. And she approaches everything with honesty.”

Success is not foreign to Botterill, and neither is work. That’s what Filippi said sets her apart from other former athletes trying to break into media.

“There are people who played the game and have the credentials, and they sort of come at it with the mindset of, ‘I know the game, I’m here, I can do this,’” he said. “But the people who are really successful at it are the ones who look at it as another skill to get better at just like skating and shooting, and stick handling.”

Simply put, Botterill puts in the work, and it all goes back to lessons learned from her family.

“I’ve just tried to continue that idea of pursuing excellence, to continue to get better,” she said. “That’s something that I take a lot of pride in, and even talking about my preparation and being ready for the shows and the games. I think that’s just something I want to make sure that I’m thorough and doing everything in the best possible way and to try to reach my full potential as often as possible.”

Exactly where Botterill goes from here remains to be seen.

Working with Sportsnet on a freelance basis technically makes her a free agent in what is shaping up to be an interesting offseason for broadcast media. Her agent, Feldman, jokingly equated it to a “media free-agent frenzy,” and he’s not wrong.

With the NHL’s U.S. broadcast rights moving from NBC to a joint deal between ESPN and Turner Sports next season, there has been plenty of movement and some major hires.

On Tuesday afternoon, ESPN announced its roster of play-by-play commentators, hosts, and analysts, which included Mleczko, Campbell-Pascall and six-time Stanley Cup champion Mark Messier. That is expected to be ESPN’s full broadcast roster for next season.

Meanwhile, TNT also has been building out its roster, most notably signing Wayne Gretzky on as an analyst to join play-by-play commentator Kenny Albert and analyst Eddie Olczyk.

As reported by The Athletic’s Sean Shapiro, it is believed that there are a number of Canadian-based broadcasters who could be in play to join either network, as we’ve seen with ESPN hiring Campbell-Pascall and Ray Ferraro. Shapiro wrote that some industry observers say that “ESPN and Turner have shown a willingness to present salaries that would make moving to the United States much easier.”

After a standout first year with Sportsnet, Botterill is going to have some options, which likely will include staying at Sportsnet, going back to MSG or being poached by TNT in their search to match ESPN’s broadcast team.

Of course, she also has a young family based in Toronto. And she and her husband own a high-performance training centre in Toronto called Journey to Excel. But, with travel restrictions loosening, it’s possible she could travel for the job and still call Toronto home, the way she did while working for MSG.

All of this begs the question: What’s next for Jennifer Botterill? Is it media? A move to the U.S.? Maybe a front-office role like her brother?

Right now, she said she’s focused on her business with her husband, her keynote speaking — a personal venture called Excel in Life — and continuing to improve as a broadcaster.

“I feel so fortunate that I’ve found a few avenues that I absolutely love right now,” Botterill said. “And I think my focus is to continue to improve in these roles, be the best that I can, and have the most positive impact that I can.”

(Top photo courtesy of Jennifer Botterill)