Manitoba Moose Broadcaster Named James H. Ellery Memorial Award Winner

Last Friday, The American Hockey League announced that Manitoba Moose manager of hockey communications and broadcaster Daniel Fink was selected as the recipient of the James H. Ellery Memorial Award. The honour is bestowed upon a member of the media at the AHL level who is deemed outstanding in the field by the league. 

While serving as the Moose's play-by-play commentator since 2019, Fink goes above and beyond in his role, including work behind the scenes in a variety of areas. 

He works closely with the local media in the Manitoba area to help keep awareness of the team at such a high level as well as coordinating interviews with all members of the Moose organization, all while helping contribute to the team's website and social media channels with photo and video content he captures while on the road with the team. 

His hard work has paid off and when asking Fink about receiving the call saying he had won the award, he said no one was more surprised than he was and went on to say "It was never a phone call I thought about getting."

Fink's first career path was vastly different than sports journalism however as he told the story of feeling lost in university while studying geology with the aspirations to become a palaeontologist.

"That was my plan since I was three years old. And I got a year into university and decided academia was not for me," he said 

"I had minor breakdown in the car one day heading back from the LRT station in Calgary with my mom and saying, I don't think I want to do this anymore and she was pretty calm about the whole thing, and just said what would you want to do and I said I think I want to be in sports radio." 

Fink went on to credit his parents for being his biggest influence of his career and how important of a role they played in his success, leading him to his award win. 

 "My parents have just been such an incredible influence and so supportive," he said "My family is just so important to me and helped me get to where I am now, and have worked in a dream job in professional hockey. Family is such a big part for so many people, but their influence really kind of pushed me in the direction, and supported me in that direction."

He also thanked his team at True North Sports + Entertainment for all the work they do saying that the team he works with on a daily basis is "incredibly talented and hard working" and that he couldn't have done it without them. 

As the AHL is a developmental league for the NHL, Fink finished off by saying that everyone in the league space is developing in their roles, not just the players and that he is always looking to improve. 

"It's not just the players, it's staff, coaches, general managers, scouts, business staff, broadcasters, it's everybody is looking to get better every day," he said "I think that's something in sports that really percolates through just you're dealing with players who are trying to improve themselves literally every minute of every day and how can you not take some of that on."

The James H. Ellery Memorial Award was first presented in 1964-65 and honours the late Jim Ellery, who worked in many roles for the AHL over 17 years.