"I'm not going to go down as a white bread, vanilla and glass of water guy," said Edwards. (NESN sent him to Chicago to cover the first two games of the Stanley Cup finals, but he won't be in the booth.) "That's not who I am. That's OK, because there are a lot of people who can do that and make a really good living at it.

"When I turn on the television I'm not looking for Roger Mudd's careful dissection of the strategy in Southeast Asia in the 1960s. I am looking for entertainment and excitement. That's why I watch sports. I want to come out of my chair." (Roger Mudd is an august news broadcaster who most recently worked for the History Channel.)

At an early age, Edwards, whose parents were professors at the University of New Hampshire, learned the value of a good performance. His father John, a theater director, taught drama, and his mother Ruth, a pianist, taught music. While soccer was his love — he ended up playing at UNH — Edwards did once give acting a shot. "I'm sure this will delight Montreal Canadiens fans to know that I was Macduff's son in my father's production of Macbeth, and I was murdered eight times," he said. "I was 10."

Why might Canadiens fans dislike him? Oh, maybe because he compared the Bruins' victory over their team to the triumph of reason and freedom over tyranny and backwardness.