Brendan Burke reaches a decade as voice of Islanders' games on MSG

On a milestone anniversary of his hiring to succeed Howie Rose as the television voice of the Islanders on MSG Networks, Brendan Burke summed up his feelings in a post on X:

“10 years ago,” he wrote on Aug. 11. “Not possible.”

Burke was 32 at the time and was calling games for the Utica Comets of the AHL. Now he is entering season 11 as the Islanders’ TV play-by-play guy on MSG Networks, with games also streaming on DAZN, which is replacing the unpopular Gotham Sports App.

“When I got the job, I had a 2-year-old, and my wife was pregnant with our second,” Burke told Newsday on Tuesday in a telephone interview. “Now I have three kids, the youngest of which is 5, almost 6. So while it feels like yesterday that I got the job, it also feels like a lifetime ago because my life is so different than it was 10 years ago.”

To say it’s been a wild ride for the Islanders, their fans and their announcers would probably be an understatement.

“I’ve been through, I think, six coaches now in the 10 years that I’ve been there and three different general managers,” Burke said. “A lot of ups and downs, and COVID in the middle. It just seems like a lot has happened . . . You watch all that hockey on the ice, it’s a lot of games. It’s almost too many to even remember individual games. I’ve seen a lot in 10 years.”

Burke also calls national games for TNT (he refers to himself in his X bio as “the guy on @NHL_on_TNT that’s not Kenny Albert”).

The Islanders open the season on Wednesday night in Toronto with Alan Fuehring on play-by-play for MSG. Burke will be calling the Kings-Avalanche game for TNT in Denver, so his Islanders season debut will be Saturday’s home opener against the Devils with Thomas Hickey as the analyst and Cal Clutterbuck between the benches.

The Islanders have made the playoffs in five of Burke’s 10 seasons. He thinks they have a chance to make it six out of 11.

“It’s exciting,” he said. “Matthew Schaefer is a guy that is — he’s worth the price of admission. He’s just such a special player that when you get to watch him and see what his next step is, I think that’s obviously one of the highlights of the season for me.

“When you look at the team, I think it’s one of those teams — just like they’ve been for the last five years — probably where they’re going to be fighting the whole year to try and get in at the end. It’s always interesting to see how they get there and which twists and turns it takes along the way, and that’s kind of the fun and the drama of doing the job that I do is getting to watch it all unfold.”

Like many in the sports media business, Burke was speaking from personal experience when he said a fond farewell to Rose, who retired earlier this month from the Mets radio booth.

Burke replaced Rose on Islanders games after Rose decided he didn’t want to continue to call hockey on TV and Mets games on the radio, as he did in what must have been an exhausting year-round schedule for more than a decade.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to know Howie for a long time,” Burke said. “My dad [longtime sports writer and editor Don Burke] covered the Mets when I was in college, and I got to know [Rose] on a personal level at that point. He’s somebody who has been in my corner since then. I used to send him tapes of my minor- league broadcasts and have him give me pointers and critiques.”

Burke and Rose got to work two Mets games together in 2022. Burke has also pinch-hit on Yankees radio broadcasts, and he was a candidate to replace John Sterling after the legendary Yankees announcer retired [the job went to Dave Sims before the 2025 season].

Would Burke have continued [a la] Rose juggling the job of calling Islanders games on TV while also doing baseball play-by-play on the radio?

“I guess the easiest answer is I never had to really consider it,” he said. “It was never an option. If it came up, I can’t say that I wouldn’t have considered it.”