Career
National Hockey League broadcasting career
McDonald began his National Hockey League broadcasting career in 1967, as the voice of the expansion Los Angeles Kings. In November 2003, he announced his 3,000th regular season game. His number of games called is thought to be the highest by an National Hockey League announcer.
When the Flames moved to Calgary in 1980, McDonald joined the New York Islanders broadcast team as play-by-play announcer, taking over for Tim Ryan.
Former Islanders captain Editor Westfall was the color commentator. Including national work, as well as work for other teams, McDonald called the play-by-play of over 200 National Hockey League playoff games.
In future years, McDonald did play-by-play on Toronto Maple Leafs telecasts and Florida Panthers radio broadcasts. Following the 2003-2004 season he retired, but he substituted for Dave Strader when the latter was on National Hockey League on National Broadcasting Company assignments on Panther telecasts during the 2005-2006 season.
Since the 2006-2007 season to present, he has returned to call Islanders games on MSG Network, filling in for Howie Rose (when Rose is on vacation or doing New York Mets games on WOR).
With his Islanders work in 2010, he has called hockey games across six decades. With Rose broadcasting the Mets playoffs in 2015, McDonald filled in for the first 3 games of the 2015-2016 season. McDonald also did broadcasts on nationally televised National Hockey League games for numerous networks.
Notably, he called games for SportsChannel America for five years, during which the channel was the rights-holder for national National Hockey League telecasts.
In addition, he broadcast the Winter Olympics for American Broadcasting Company and TNT, announcing at three Games. In addition, he filled in for Florida Panthers radio play-by-play man Randy Moller for three games when Moller became ill in January 2010.
Non-hockey related broadcasting
Outside of ice hockey, McDonald served as an announcer for the New York Mets Major League Baseball team in 1982. In 1992, he did play-by-play on CTV for Olympic basketball games.
Personal life.
