Dave Starman gets 'dream of a lifetime' as new Rangers lead radio analyst on ESPN New York

Dave Starman has had a long, multifaceted life in hockey, one that he said makes him feel like “the luckiest guy on the planet.”

But his latest shift change might be his coolest yet.

“Like every other kid my age, I grew up listening to Marv [Albert] and Sal [Messina] on the radio doing the Rangers,” Starman said. “The thought of having grown up listening to Sal and now I am Sal is just amazing.”

Like Messina, Starman is a former goaltender. Now, like Messina before him, he is the lead radio analyst for Rangers hockey.

With Sam Rosen and Joe Micheletti having retired from calling Rangers games on TV and Kenny Albert and Dave Maloney succeeding them, the Rangers needed a new radio team.

Alex Faust quickly got the play-by-play job. Starman, 57, applied for the job to join him at ESPN New York radio, assuming it was a longshot.

“When Joe retired at the end of the season, a light bulb went off in my head and I said, ‘I don’t think I’m the fit, but maybe I am, who knows?’” Starman said.

So he reached out to Kevin Meininger, senior coordinating producer at MSG Media and asked to be considered. He got the job. “I was numb for a couple days,” Starman said.

It was a popular decision in Long Island hockey circles, where Starman, who grew up in Rockaway Beach and now lives in Lido Beach, for decades has been a fixture in the hockey community.

His resume is rich and complicated.

Among his credits is playing at the University of Hartford, coaching minor league, junior and youth teams, working in USA Hockey’s coaching education program, scouting for three NHL teams and calling college hockey games for CBS Sports Network.

He recently added the Frozen Four for Westwood One to his qualifications. “In hindsight, that might have been what helped me the most in terms of the Rangers job,” Starman said. “I wound up with some big-game radio experience over the last five years.”

Starman has seen the area’s hockey reputation rise over decades, to the point it no longer is novel to see Long Islanders at the highest reaches of the NHL, such as the Rangers’ Adam Fox, as well as college and other elite levels.

“It’s awesome, and it’s cool,” Starman said. “All of us who coached all these years on the Island, we have a small part, I think, in the development of a lot of these Long Island players.”

James Hagens of Hauppauge was chosen seventh overall by the Bruins in this year’s NHL Draft. Naturally, Starman coached Hagens’ father, Michael, with the Junior Islanders in the 1990s. The elder Hagens later played at SUNY-Brockport in the late 1990s.

Now Starman has a new gig, which he called “the dream of a lifetime.” He is ready to pick up where he left off in the NHL on February 28, 1993, when he called the Islanders’ 7-6 overtime victory over the Whalers in Hartford for the Islanders Radio Network.

“I tell people I don’t like to rush into things,” he said with a laugh. “I'm really looking forward to the challenge of being back in the NHL, reestablishing myself as an NHL broadcaster and doing it for a team like the Rangers.”

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.