For Eddie Olczyk, it’s a huge week. He’s currently calling the Stanley Cup playoffs for TNT and the Kentucky Derby is Saturday. It’s the one day on the calendar that the masses pretend to care about horse racing, but OIczyk is someone who actually does truly care about the “sport of kings.”
The Chicago Blackhawks legend and member of the Seattle Kraken broadcast team is into equestrian sports almost as much as he’s into hockey.
Olczyk won the cup as a player with the New York Rangers in ’94 and coached the Pittsburgh Penguins from ’03-’05. Olczyk will be calling his 16th Stanley Cup Final this June, and first as a member of TNT, which will be televising the event for the first time.
He’s also done very well betting on horses too. In 2009, Olczyk won nearly a half a million dollars on a pick 6 bet.
From the New York Times:
It’s almost four years now. It was a Friday night, I was traveling home from the NHL awards, and it was at Hollywood Park. My flight was delayed three hours leaving Las Vegas, so I was supposed to land at 7 Chicago time, but I didn’t end up landing until 10 o’clock Chicago time that Friday night. I had been handicapping all afternoon and I made the call on the runway actually at O’Hare. It was pretty interesting.
I was lucky to land when I did and lucky Xpressbet was in existence, and there’s nothing like a DVR. So I have to give an assist to my youngest son for setting the DVR to be able to roll back the races and watch them. So yeah, that was quite the Pick 6. There were three winners that night because there was a massive carryout. So the payout was actually $497,000 something.
Quite the story for Olczyk, who of course parlayed that experience into
It’s an interesting New York Times interview, how tech and new media helped him pocket a half a million dollars.
In the paper of record, Olczyk goes on to also describe his first Kentucky Derby experience; set up by his friends at NBC, as well as his days owning horses.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Washington Post and ESPN. You can follow him on Linked In and Twitter