
DENVER — Marc Moser cannot simply enter his neighborhood bagel shop, place an order, sit down and eat his meal. He is rather capable of doing all those things but it would not be in his nature.
From the second the door swings open, the spectacle that is “The Marc Moser Show” begins and today’s venue is the Bagel Stop Cafe in Parker. His first thought is to talk about the restaurant itself and the business’ peak hours. Not just on this particular day. Try every day. He can tell you the store opens at 6 a.m. Monday through Friday and at 7 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
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The drive-thru, he says, can go 15 cars deep over a two- to three-hour period on weekdays. Some Saturdays, it looks more like a parking lot. Anyone who actually enters the Bagel Stop Cafe needs to come before 10 a.m. because there’s a really strong chance they’ll get every bagel imaginable. Those who arrive after 10:30 a.m. until the shop’s 1:45 p.m. closing time must settle for what’s left. Either way, Moser promises whatever you order will make you return several times over.
He’s fond of the pepper jack bagel and would probably take an oath for his undying love when it comes to the assortment of breakfast burritos, if asked. They’re out of pepper jack but upon eating the cheddar, he’s found another go-to he can discuss at great length.
All these details are provided before getting to the counter and it takes less than 60 seconds.
Imagine what he could do with a full-on broadcast.
Breakfast food. Film. Music. World War II history. Whatever. Moser knows more than the basics. He provides insight, generates curiosity and affords the sort of thoroughness about a subject that makes anyone listening feel as if they are an immediate expert.
Any Avalanche fan who has listened to Moser over the years knows this. They may know his voice and the stories he has told, but not much is known about the man who has provided the soundtrack to some of the franchise’s greatest moments.
Moser and those who know him insist he has absolutely nothing to hide. Well, most of that is true.
“I’ve told this story before and he hates it, but I think it’s hilarious,” said Altitude Sports host and sideline reporter Lauren Gardner, who is one of Moser’s closest friends. “We arrived at the airport and the (team media) has our own bus. We arrive after a game. It’s late at night, we get off the bus and we’re waiting for the team to board. We’re looking around going, ‘Where’s Mose?’ He’s nowhere to be found and all of a sudden we hear a muffled banging.
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“He got locked into the bathroom in the back of the bus. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.”
Gardner cannot stop laughing as she tells this story. Such an anecdote even receives a chuckle from Moser’s sister, Kristen Pegg, upon hearing it for the first time.
Both women have stories. There’s the comedic tales, but more of what they have to say centers around the acts of a man whom they consider to be an amazing professional but an even better human being.
Pegg lovingly speaks about her brother’s character. She says Moser is the kind of person who would help someone if they were stuck on the side of the road. That’s not lip service, because it actually happened. Gardner recalled how Emily Wade, the Avs’ social media and digital marketing manager, once had a flat tire and was stuck at the Pepsi Center.
Wade said Moser came to get her and drove her to practice and then the airport, so she could catch a team flight. She said she was a little surprised but not too shocked Moser would do such a thing because he’s “the coolest guy I know.”
“He’s someone that I would call if I have a problem. Any kind of problem. A flat tire or I get dumped or I need help picking out what shoes I should wear — which, I love to admit, I am his stylist,” said Wade, a fashionista who can easily challenge for the title of “Best Dressed” within the entire Avs organization. “I think he’s one of the most genuine, down-to-earth people I’ve ever met. He’s super popular and famous and he’s one of the most famous faces of the Avalanche.
“You’d have no idea when you meet him. He talks to fans every day. He tweets back at all of them. He meets up with them whenever they want. Walking down the street, he takes photos with people who recognize him. It’s a pleasure to know him and a pleasure to work with him.”
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None of this comes as a surprise to Pegg. As children, they grew up in Sacramento, California, and Moser was always there for her when their parents were working. She described her brother as “my caretaker” when they were young and how he always did anything for his kid sister.
“My cousin brought this up to me a couple weeks ago. Marc, when we were little, would put on these amazing puppet shows for us,” Pegg said. “He would entertain us while babysitting us. He’d put on a comedy show and we were maybe 3 or 4 and he was probably 9 or 10. I don’t know where he got these puppets but he would make up stories and it was comedy that made us laugh.”
The fact Moser got into broadcasting was not a surprise. He could command an audience with his stories and amaze people with his ability to retain information on any subject. So it only made sense he became a communications and journalism major at California State University Sacramento.
An athlete in high school, he was already in love with sports. The passion he developed for hockey started in 1989 when he lived in Chicago. Steve Larmer, Denis Savard, Steve Thomas and Doug Wilson were leading the way while a young Jeremy Roenick turned heads as a 20-year-old. Every bit of it laid the foundation for how a native Californian would eventually become one of the NHL’s more well-known play-by-play announcers.
Moser returned to college and worked at the campus radio station. Then he interned across town at KFBK, the station that launched conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh into national syndication. His boss at the station? It was none other than Golden State Warriors longtime broadcaster Tim Roye.
“Tim did me a great favor. He let me do stuff,” Moser said. “I could go into the studio and practice if I wanted to but he would let me do stuff. I would go to Sac State baseball games and do a live report. I would go to the PGA or the Senior PGA golf tournaments, and I’d go on air with him and do a report while I was still an intern.
“Then they decided they wanted to hire me. I was like, ‘Whoa. This is pretty cool.’ ”
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He wasn’t even out of college yet and already had a full-time job. Moser was calling Sac State football and basketball games while hosting a sports talk show on a nightly basis.
Everything was good until June 1996. The station switched formats from sports to talk, and Moser was out of a job.
Moser sent a demo tape to a number of people, and it ended up in the hands of a Seattle-based consultant who was headhunting for KKFN in Denver. The station manager called Moser and offered him the job.
“I said, ‘I’m there.’ ” Moser recalled. “So I put my stuff in storage. Loaded up my little pickup truck with as much as I could and drove straight to Denver, Colorado in 1996.”
At first, he was doing everything from reporting to some sports talk to in-studio updates. There were times when he even did a little board operations work. But by the 1997-98 season, he was asked to be the new pregame, intermission and postgame host for Avalanche broadcasts.
He also hosted “Avalanche Talk,” a show that allowed fans to call in and talk about what happened with that night’s game. Then there was also the auto racing show Moser did every Saturday morning.
KOA News Radio host Marty Lenz, who worked with Moser at KKFN, said his former co-worker was “a joy to work with” because of the professionalism he showed on air and away from the microphone.
“Marc cared about the board operator, the executive producer, the technical guy,” Lenz said. “He saw it as ‘I might be the mouthpiece, but without these people, I’m squat because they’re the ones doing the background work to make me look good.’ He’s extremely talented but he’s also extremely humble in his approach too.”
The situation Moser was placed in with the Avalanche was far beyond ideal. Already a Stanley Cup champion in their first season, the Avs were becoming one of the main attractions in Denver and throughout all of North American sports at the time.
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It was a roster featuring future Hall of Famers Peter Forsberg, Patrick Roy and Joe Sakic that would add more Hall of Fame-bound talents in Rob Blake, Ray Bourque, Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne over the coming years.
Covering a franchise that’s perennial in the Stanley Cup discussion meant Moser could not make summer plans for a while, but he was not complaining.
Denver, as a city, was the place to be. The Avs won a Cup in 1995-96 and again in the 2000-01 season, while the Broncos captured consecutive Super Bowl titles in 1997 and 1998.
“To be around those guys every single day and be in that environment every single day is something I never took for granted,” Moser said. “It was always a situation that I realized how good the team was, and I think the fans did as well. They realized how good this team was, and it was an awesome experience.”
Moser said every player he dealt with was “really good to me” but he didn’t win people over just by being polite and easygoing. He worked hard and made a point to be at every media availability.
Even to this day, Moser has a reputation for being a shadow who is all over the place.
Development camp? Yes. Rookie camp? Yep? Training camp? Well, duh. Morning skates? Oh, he’s at the rink.
There’s a few things to know about Moser when he’s at morning skate — No. 1 being that he’s paying attention to every detail; No. 2 is he is usually pretty hungry.
Gardner said Moser “lives off vending machine food” whenever the Avs are on the road for a morning skate. There was a time when they were at the United Center in Chicago and the man known as “Mose” or “The Mose” said he needed breakfast.
“He made his way over to the vending machine and got two honey buns and a Diet Coke,” Gardner said. “I try to get him to eat better. But I have to give him crap about it. I cannot sing his praises all the time.”
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Before she knew about his honey bun diet and mini-bathroom vacation, Gardner was a new reporter fresh out of the University of Colorado. The first time she met Moser was when they were covering a go-kart race that was aired on Altitude.
She was just learning her away around the business and sought advice from Moser, someone she admired while growing up in Denver.
“Talking to Mose, I always looked up to him. He’s very personable to the point you soon forget he’s a legend in the making,” Gardner said. “He made you feel at ease. He was a pilot. I became a pilot later on, too. He took the time to ask me what my goals were and what I was wanting to accomplish as a person in this industry.”
Gardner said Moser told her to “say yes” to every opportunity that came her way and that she should always embrace assignments with excitement.
He also told her to stay humble and to work hard.
“That,” Gardner said. “That always stuck with me.”
If there’s a feature of Moser’s personality that gets everyone talking, it would be his humility.
Gardner said Moser, despite his connections and experience, refuses to rest on what he’s done and always pushes to do more.
Lenz, who played college football at Colorado State, said there’s a comfort level Moser creates because he’s just “The Mose” and never makes a point to make anyone feel less than.
“He’s one of those guys who is smart who would never tell you he’s smart,” Lenz said. “That alone means he’s smart. He knows shit. He’s observant and a genuinely good guy.”
Pegg said her brother does not act like he’s special. The rest of the world, however, does not feel that way.
“We were on vacation in Mexico and my husband was going into the sauna. He was talking to a guy who was from Denver and they talked about how we just moved there,” she said. “Marc somehow came up and this guy asked my husband, ‘Do you know Marc Moser?’
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He said, ‘Yeah, he’s my brother-in-law.’
“That conversation? About Marc? It was not even in this country. It happened in Mexico. It is crazy bizarre.”
Maybe the strongest story of all comes from Moser himself. There was a day when he was at a gas station and he used his debit card.
The clerk saw the name and said, “Marc Moser? Isn’t that the name of the Avalanche radio broadcaster?”
Moser played it cool. He said “yes” without giving anything away before asking the clerk what he thought of how “the other Moser” called a game. The clerk said he liked Moser’s broadcasting style.
He paused for a second and responded, “Yeah, he’s not so bad,” before walking back to his car.
What exactly is it that makes Moser so good whenever he’s in front of a mic?
“He’s genuine. His emotion is real. When he feels it, he shares it. When he’s happy, you hear it. When he’s disgusted, you feel it. He’s not fake,” Lenz said. “He’s like that on the air and off the air. He can kid. He’s fun and self-deprecating and he’s a solid human being. That’s what makes it so good.
“Some guys gin it up but not him. He feels it.”
After spending 11 years on radio, Moser makes the move to television, replacing Mike Haynes.
Lenz can attest there is a difference between being on the radio compared to TV.
“Fact is, he makes it look simple, and when someone makes it look simple, folks don’t realize how complex and hard it is,” Lenz said. “It’s how to describe when guys are on the boards and knowing when there is a guy checking or someone pokes their stick out for a puck. I’m happy for him but part of me is semi-bummed he’s doing TV because he’s so good at the radio piece that I love hearing and listening to that.
“I know he will bring that element to TV. He’s so good at the descriptive that he won’t have to do that as much but, still, he’s going to be fantastic.”
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Moser said he never really thought about doing TV because he loved being on the radio.
But when the opportunity was presented to take over the role, Moser viewed it as one of the biggest honors of his career.
“The best part about it was I was with a great crew on radio. I’m going to go be going to what I think is the best crew in the National Hockey League,” Moser said. “The people I’m going to be working with are people I’ve known for a long, long time. They’re people I am friends with on a personal level.
“When (Altitude executive vice president & general manager) Ken Miller came to me, I thought about all of that and what a great opportunity this would be. This crew is amazing.”
Moser runs downs the names of everyone he’d be working with from Peter McNab, his longtime partner in crime, down to the person responsible for graphics.
Grateful for everything he gets, that’s Moser the broadcaster.
But who exactly is Moser when he’s not calling games?
“I suppose outside of it all, I am a frustrated guitar player,” Moser said. “I don’t practice as much as I should. When I pick a guitar up after not looking at one for a couple of weeks, I feel like I should turn it into a coffee table as opposed to doing anything with it.”
Anyone who follows Moser on Twitter or has a casual conversation with him will quickly learn that he’s a history buff.
Especially World War II.
Moser said when he was 8 or 9, he checked out a book from the school library called “Great American Fighter Pilots of World War II.” He estimated he read it cover to cover at least 10 times.
Pegg remembers hearing the story of how her brother had a kindergarten teacher who had a brother that fought and died in World War II.
“When I really started noticing it was when we moved here and he’d be watching documentaries one after the other about it,” she said. “He reads so many books that he can tell you anything you want to know about the weaponry, the tanks or the strategy that was used, and it’s all so amazing to me.”
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Moser is a member of a group that takes veterans back to Normandy every year for D-Day. He talks about the Beaches of Normandy with a clear amount of respect. For him, this is hallowed ground.
It goes beyond what he read in books or has seen in documentaries. With each trip, it’s a chance to forge another relationship with soldiers whom he sees as larger-than-life figures he grew up studying.
“But to be there and to be around these men. I’ll tell you what’s the most rewarding for me. It’s to see the way people in Normandy still appreciate what these men did so many years ago,” he said. “We’re going to be on the 75th anniversary next year and to see the way that the appreciation is passed down. To watch old ladies, who were teenagers at the time of D-Day, come up to our vets, hug them and cry and kiss them. They were liberated from tyranny back then.
“To see that passed down to generation to generation to generation. … To be there? It’s almost spiritual.”
He likes World War II history, playing the guitar and music history to the point he dressed in a black suit and took photos in front of the Motown Museum in Detroit on a trip last season.
Wade knows about Moser’s fondness, or lack thereof in some cases, for certain types of music. The day Moser gave her a ride because of her flat tire, they listened to music. More specifically, they listened to his music because he wasn’t exactly feeling what Wade normally listens to on a daily basis.
In fairness, she wanted to hear the Goo Goo Dolls only because Wade admitted to the fact it’s Moser’s least favorite band.
“I wanted to listen to it just because he hates it,” Wade said. “Classic rock is his thing. He tells me all the time, ‘Emily. Just because you weren’t born yet, doesn’t mean the music wasn’t good.’ I’ve tried to open my mind. I’m a big Pearl Jam fan so we’ve had common ground meeting on that. He has great music taste, I will say. But on the car on the way to the airport, sometimes, I’ll listen to Selena Gomez and sing along.
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“He does not want to do that, but he did it once.”
Again. Those are things he likes.
Moser’s greatest love is, and will always be, his daughter, Brooke. Upon answering the question “Who is Marc Moser?” one of the first things he said was “a man who wants to do right by his daughter.”
“He’s a great dad,” Gardner said. “I think that’s the one thing we’ve all noticed and taken note of. He adores his daughter Brooke. Even if he’s had a long road trip, he’s always making sure he can make it back to pick her up from school or plan a great weekend with her.”
Pegg said her brother has struck a balance with Brooke when it comes to showing her what it means to have a great life while also staying grounded.
“He was the kind who knew what kind of parent he wanted to be,” she said. “What I admire is that he talks to his daughter every morning and every night. Regardless of where he is and what he is doing, it is incredibly important that they talk. He wants to keep that connection with her.”
Moser said he realized early on that as a parent, things can go by at a fast pace. There can be challenges.
He’s on the road for several weeks of the year. One day he’s in Raleigh, N.C. On another, it could be Vancouver.
Brooke also has demands, too, as he pointed out. She wants to spend time with her friends, go to the mall and live the life of a typical 12-year-old.
“What you have to do, I think, is try and maximize that time in the best way you possibly can,” Moser said. “When you are together, make the time quality time. Make it focus time. Make it time that both of you will remember.”
(Top photo courtesy of the Colorado Avalanche)
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