Former women's hockey player AJ Mleczko breaks the ice as TV analyst for NHL playoff games

When former U.S. Olympian AJ Mleczko left her audition for an NBC television analyst job in the spring of 2005, she assumed her broadcasting career was over before it launched.

Nobody had told her she would audition with legendary play-by-play man Mike Emrick and they would broadcast her U.S. team’s loss to Canada at the 2002 Olympics. Intimidation. Sentimentality. Nervousness. Mleczko had it all going on.

“It was a difficult audition,” said Mleczko, an Olympic silver and gold medalist. “I was thinking, ‘Well, this was a great experience, but that may well be my one-and-done broadcasting career.”

To Mleczko’s surprise, she was offered the job as an analyst for the women’s games at the 2006 Olympics. Twelve years later, Mleczko is the first woman to be working NHL Stanley Cup playoff games as an in-booth analyst.

She will work beside Kenny Albert on Friday for Game 5 of the Nashville Predators-Colorado Avalanche Western Conference quarterfinal in Nashville (9:30 p.m. ET, NBC Sports Network). Mleczko also served in the role for Game 1. Nashville leads the series 3-1.

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“I have to believe (NBC) saw potential because I was very unpolished at the time I was hired,” Mleczko said.

Allison Jaime (AJ) Mleczko, 42, never considered broadcasting before her NBC tryout. Today, Mleczko is a trailblazer because she is helping open the door for other women to work in the booth in a male-dominated sport.

“AJ is an authentic hockey voice and knows how to break the game down,” said Sam Flood, the executive producer and president of NBC and NBC Sports Network. “After her work at the Olympics this year, there was no question that she deserved more opportunities on our hockey telecasts.”

Mleczko’s first NHL in-booth appearance came March 6 when she did the Detroit vs. Boston game. By then, she had already worked 13 years as an analyst on women’s international games, men’s college games, plus sled hockey and Olympic field hockey.    

“In my mind, it was always a dream that I would be able to do some NHL, but (NBC) has such an incredible array of talent in their broadcast booth that I just thought it was a pipe dream,” Mleczko said.

NBC has previously used former U.S. women’s star Cammi Granato as an "Inside the Glass" reporter. Kathryn Tappen is a highly respected NBC studio host for hockey. Mleczko presumed that the network would someday place a woman in the hockey booth. But Mleczko said she “wasn’t holding my breath” it would be her.

Emrick isn’t surprised. He has no memory of her flubbing her audition, but he isn’t shocked that she left the studio wanting to be better.

“She sets a very high standard,” Emrick said. “She works really hard and prepares incredibly hard.”

Mleczko said there has been no adjustment to make the switch from women’s hockey to the NHL, other than doing homework on players and team tendencies.

“When you break it down to the x’s and o’s, it’s the same sport,” she said.

In three of her four NHL games, she has worked with Brian Boucher, who is stationed "Inside the Glass." She said there is chemistry because they both offer a different perspective. Boucher was an NHL goalie and Mleczko was a forward.

“I expected he would want to talk a lot about the goalies, and what I found is he likes to talk about the shooter because as a goalie, that’s what he saw,” Mleczko said. “While I’m looking at the goalie a lot, and saying, ‘He was off-balance or look at this about him.’ That surprised me. But when you think that I was a skater, it makes sense.”

Mleczko, who played on a boy's hockey team until she was a teenager, is appreciative of other women broadcasters paving the way. 

That’s not say it is always easy. Mleczko said social media has helped her develop “thick skin.”

Some comments she receives do stick with her, like the man who “said the only way I can be useful is if I get coffee for the male members of the crew.”

Mleczko doesn’t let that bother her because she knows other women are pushing to join her. Monique Lamoureux, one of the stars of the gold-medal winning U.S. women’s Olympic team, recently worked as a studio analyst for NHL Network. Meghan Duggan, the captain of that team, is doing postgame analysis for Bruins’ playoff games.

Said Flood: "We want the best people to analyze hockey, regardless of gender. The goal is to have a talented mix of voices to inform and entertain the hockey audience.”