In the months leading up to the 2020 NHL Draft, top prospect Tim Stützle spent hours on his computer being grilled by general managers and scouts.
Before the tough questions came, however, each video interview started with the same seemingly innocuous question: How do you pronounce your name?
“Literally every team asks that,” Stützle said, laughing at the thought.
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And for good reason. Stützle is a dazzling offensive threat, a dynamic skater and a nifty playmaker. He’s a surefire top-10 pick.
His name is one people need to know. Enunciating slowly and clearly in his conversations with NHL brass only increases the odds he’ll hear it announced properly on draft day.
Still, that’s far from a certainty. Even after his careful dictations, tongue-tied attempts were as common as the German forward zipping past an opponent.
“It’s ‘Stootz-LE,’” the 18-year-old said. “It’s always a little bit funny. For them, it’s tough to say the umlaut. In Germany, it’s just normal. It’s easy to say. Because they don’t have it in America or in Canada, normally it’s more ‘Stutz-LE.’”
Stützle takes all the slip-ups in good stride. He doesn’t fret the mispronunciations, reasoning that his surname is a tricky one.
With an easygoing attitude and a cheery disposition, Stützle won’t be inclined to correct people forever and might give in to whatever is easiest for others. It might not be long before he joins the long list of NHL players current and past who have been referred to by multiple pronunciations over the course of their careers.
Changes in a name’s pronunciation have occurred for a variety of reasons – either at a player’s request, through clarification or after a period of initial indifference.
Regardless of the reason for the switch-up, it all comes down to one thing for broadcasters: making sure it’s said as closely as possible to what the player ultimately settles on.
Between Brad Marchand’s superb play and outlandish antics, fans of opposing teams have had many opportunities to refer to the Bruins pest using unflattering terms or four-letter words.
Hockey commentators haven’t had as many options to chose from, and picking the right one hasn’t always been easy.
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“There was such a discrepancy with how many people were saying ‘MAR-shond’ and how many were saying ‘MAR-shand’ that we asked him, and he said ‘MAR-shond’ is really the way he wanted it said,” veteran NHL broadcaster Mike (Doc) Emrick said. “We, universally, at NBC shifted to ‘MAR-shond.’
“It becomes a factor of habit that is difficult to break immediately. Sometimes in the heat of the moment, play-by-play guys will shift back to what they have said rather than what they mean to say because they have to shift gears. Sometimes when things are going really fast, we don’t do it flawlessly.”
Marchand used the current pronunciation as a rookie, went by the other moniker for years thereafter and then reverted.
“People called me ‘MAR-shond.’ When I grew up, I said ‘MAR-shand.’ That’s what I said,” he said. “But then I started asking my family. Everyone started questioning it. They said they usually go by ‘MAR-shond.’
Confusion or inconsistency in enunciation can come because of a variety of reasons. If anyone should know, it’s Emrick.
Respected hockey commentator Dick Irvin Jr. put Emrick in charge of overseeing the compilation of phonetics of tricky names for the broadcasters’ pronunciation guide beginning in 1983 at the latter’s request.
Emrick tasked local play-by-play men with asking the players on their teams how to properly say their names each September. The broadcasters would then call him and leave a message on his answering machine with the careful dictations.
Emrick transcribed them and published a list in time for the start of the season. It took roughly a week to do – the first part anyway.
“Invariably, after the guide was put out, there would be three or four calls from PR people who would say, ‘Our broadcaster called you with that and he was wrong.’ So, then you would have to put out an addendum to it,” Emrick said. “This was long before the days of email. It wasn’t a lightning-like way that you could get the message out to teams other than by sending some kind of a fax. It was not a simple process to try to keep everybody updated on what was accurate.
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“From that standpoint, at times it was a headache. But the idea was that we all at least know the proper way to say a guy’s name.”
After the 2004-05 lockout, the NHL took over the process from Emrick et al.
The teams’ PR staffers now put microphones on the players and ask them to say their names. They transcribe them and convert them into phonetic spellings.
Like the previous method, this one isn’t foolproof.
“Some players are not as clear speaking into a microphone,” Emrick said. “Some people that work with them are not as insistent on having them say it slowly and naturally and saying it a couple of times.”
The process and the result aren’t perfect. Not everyone speaks as clearly as Marchand, for instance, Emrick said.
At the very least, the pronunciation guide provides a baseline.
National broadcasters like Emrick, who calls his share of afternoon games with limited pre-game availabilities, can consult with his local colleagues.
The better solution whenever possible is to get it from the horse’s mouth and simply ask the player.
That method worked well for Oilers radio play-by-play man Jack Michaels when Andrej Sekera showed up in Edmonton after signing with the team in 2015.
Michaels asked and was told the more appropriate pronunciation for the Slovakian blueliner was “SEK-er-a” (almost two syllables) rather than “Se-KER-ra,” as he’d been called before.
Asking a player doesn’t always get the desired result, though.
“Hockey players, as a rule, are super deferential. Their answer is always, ‘Whatever. It doesn’t matter,’” Michaels said. “I always have to get through that. ‘Just tell me.’
“The least I can do when you’ve made the National Hockey League is pronounce your name correctly. That is a bare minimum.”
European players can be particularly deferential, with many dictating their names and then saying, “But I don’t care” – the worst words a broadcaster can hear, Emrick said. “We want them to care. And we wanna try to replicate how they say their names.”
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Kevin Quinn, who calls Oilers games on Sportsnet and other contests on Hockey Night In Canada, will ask incoming European players how they say their name. The common reply: “How do you pronounce it?”
Quinn generally counters with a couple of his own questions.
When you go home to Helsinki or Moscow or Stockholm, how do they say your name? What does your grandmother think – how would she like it pronounced?
“I think it’s a sign of respect,” he said. “It really isn’t that difficult to try and accommodate.”
Russian surnames can bring their share of inconsistencies. Think of all the ways Rangers rookie netminder Igor Shesterkin’s last name has been said last season. English pronunciations usually place emphasis on the first syllable, whereas in Russian it’s on the second.
Panthers forward Evgenii Dadonov asked Quinn to say “Da-DON-ov” rather than “DAD-on-ov” on the air without mentioning anything to the local broadcast team.
All broadcasters want to get names right – or as right as can be. Sometimes being perfect isn’t perfect.
Former Oiler and 2012 No. 1 pick Nail Yakupov played junior in the OHL with Sarnia, so his name had been North Americanized by the time he arrived in Edmonton.
Yakupov told Quinn he wouldn’t be able to say his name as Russians typically do. But when Yakupov scored one night in New York, Quinn belted out, “Na-EEEEEELLLL Yak-KU-pov!”
The call gained praise from the winger but confused Quinn’s bosses. The problem was it sounded unnatural coming out of a North American man’s mouth to be heard by a predominately North American audience.
Quinn’s colleague Michaels understands the predicament.
“I don’t get it right to the point where I’m gonna make an idiot out of myself or I’m going to do a disservice to the player’s name,” Michaels said.
Emrick is on the same page. He had to North Americanize the surname of the Stastny brothers when they played for the Quebec Nordiques in the 1980s because passing plays became tongue twisters. Saying Stastny the Slovakian way – “STOSH-ny” – three times in row became cumbersome when Peter, Marian and Anton were whistling the puck back and forth.
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“It got in the way of the flow of the verbiage,” Emrick said.
There’s a fine line because he wants to pay the proper respect. “My philosophy is not to draw attention to myself; it’s to draw attention to the player,” he added. “You don’t wanna sound affected.”
Ever since he entered the NHL, Elias Pettersson has been making the heads of defencemen and goaltenders spin with his dazzling creativity and deadly shot.
But the Canucks centre has also been creating headaches for broadcasters as they struggle over how to properly pronounce his name.
It was particularly a talking point early in his rookie season as Pettersson burst onto the scene without a consistent standard for dictation.
It’s taken quite some time before the player himself set the record straight, opting to make life easier for those behind the mic.
“I’m just gonna pronounce it my way,” he said. “The accent here is different. For me, Canadians and North Americans can’t say the Swedish version, so I like it as ‘Elias PET-ter-sson.’”
The Vancouver star figured people following the Canucks couldn’t properly accentuate the end of his name like those speaking his native language. It should be ‘PET-ter-shon.’
The way Swedes pronounce his name would sound like it was being bastardized coming from the mouth of a North American person, Michaels argues.
Yet there has been variation in how the 2018-19 Calder Trophy winner’s name is or should be said on the west side of the Atlantic Ocean.
“He was on After Hours and Scott Oake asked him about it. And Scott Oake said, ‘OK. That’s it. It’s PET-ter-sson from now on,” Quinn said.
“I’m like, ‘That’s Rogers. That’s my company. I have to call him what everyone calls him.’”
Michaels, however, asked him on two separate occasions during his freshman campaign and got the same – but different – answer.
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“Everyone else is calling him ‘PET-ter-sson,’ but he’s told me to my face: ‘PETE-ter-son’ and he’s used his name as ‘PETE-ter-son’ in a commercial,” Michaels said.
Pettersson claims he doesn’t really care how he’s referred to but noted it was Brock Boeser who helped him zero in on the “PET-ter-sson” handle.
He admits to switching thing up in Edmonton last season, however, which has added to the confusion.
“I said it a different way then,” Pettersson said. “(Boeser) gave me a little chirp for that. I like it more his way.”
Other times, broadcasters are told to make a change because it suits those in the community better.
Emrick recalls Teemu Selanne’s surname being the Finnish “Sel-LEN-ne” in the pronunciation guide when the winger was a rookie. However, because Winnipeggers called him “SEL-lan-ne,” the team asked the rising star if he’d be agreeable to adopting the new pronunciation. The rest is history.
A change in the way fans hear some of their favourite players’ names can happen for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, like in the case of Sekera, it’s a result of moving to a new team in a different city.
During his brief stint as an Oiler early last season, winger Tomas Jurco asked to go by the more traditional Slovakian pronunciation of “Jur-CHO” rather than “Jur-CO” – as he’d been known throughout his career.
Daniel Briere wanted to be addressed as Danny Briere when he arrived in Philadelphia. He was concerned people in the City of Brotherly Love would be confused by the French pronunciation of his first name.
Similarly, journeyman forward Alex Chiasson’s name was said differently than you’d hear today after arriving in Ottawa from Dallas as part of the Jason Spezza deal.
Chiasson is from Quebec and, since Ottawa is a bilingual city, some media and fans began using the French pronunciation of his surname – in which the first syllable is more elongated.
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But he asked that the Anglicized version be used again after one season.
“It just felt like it got butchered a little bit,” the Oilers winger said. “The way it is now is just easier.
“If you’re not from a French community, it’s hard to pronounce it the other way.”
Other times though, a change is requested by the player for a more personal reason.
Defenceman Alexander Petrovic, who spent the 2019-20 season with the AHL’s Providence Bruins, once asked for his last name to be pronounced to honour his Serbian roots (Pet-TRO-vich) rather than the North American way he grew up with (PET-tro-vich).
The decision was made early in the 2017-18 season when Petrovic was with the Panthers. The reason was so his grandfather, a refugee from the former Yugoslavia who settled in Edmonton, could hear the traditional dictation when he watched the games on TV. Budimir Petrovic died a few months later in February 2018 at age 96.
“I know he was very proud of me playing in the NHL,” Petrovic said. “I thought for him hearing the name the right way was a good thing.”
Mid-career name changes can wreak havoc on broadcasters. Depending on how ingrained the previous version was in their minds, old habits sometimes die hard.
“I can be annoying to be around because if we’re in casual conversation with colleagues and someone happens to say some name wrong, I’ll instantly bring it back up and say it the right way,” Michaels said. “If I hear something, it starts creeping into my little brain and once it’s in there it’s hard to get out.”
As hard as it is on those doing play-by-play, the player’s decision is all that matters.
Conor Sheary went a couple of years before clarifying that his name is pronounced “Share-EEE” and not “Sheer-EEE.” The late Derek Boogaard didn’t revert to the proper articulation of “Beau-guard” because the revised version sounded scarier to the tough guy.
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In Stützle’s case, he has plenty of time to decide how determined he wants to be about having his name pronounced correctly or whether he’ll relent and opt for more North American dictation.
After an eventful summer in which he received a well-wishing text from countryman and Oilers superstar Leon Draisaitl and took up golfing, Stützle is now in his second year with Adler Mannheim of Germany’s top pro league.
He hopes this stint is a short one. His intentions are clear: He wants to make the NHL this season, which means coming to North America for training camp.
At that point, the queries for clarification about his last name from media members will surely begin in droves.
“I don’t feel very bad if it’s pronounced wrong because it’s tough to say,” Stützle said. “I have no problem with that.”
He’ll eventually be forced to settle on something. And once the pronunciation has been decided, it’s the broadcasters who must ultimately adapt.
“I took the Dale Carnegie course,” Emrick said. “Dale Carnegie always said, ‘The sound of a man’s name is the sweetest sound to his ear.’ However that person wants it is how we are to do it.
“Sadly, it’s an imperfect science where you do make mistakes on guys. You don’t want to, but it’s three hours of talking and you are going to make mistakes. But you wanna have the basics in front of you so that you get it right because it is their name.”
—With files from Thomas Drance and Fluto Shinzawa
(Photo of Elias Pettersson: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)
