Rochester Amerks Honor Don Stevens, AHL's Longest-Tenured Broadcaster, After 40 Seasons

Forty years of Amerks hockey walked into The Blue Cross Arena on April 4, and the building responded the way Rochester always does for Don Stevens: with a standing ovation before a single puck dropped. Stevens, 78, is finishing his 40th and final season as the team's play-by-play broadcaster, a run that makes him the longest-tenured broadcaster in American Hockey League history. Don Stevens Night, presented by Maddie's Motor Sports, brought the Amerks and the Providence Bruins to Blue Cross Arena for a formal farewell to the only broadcaster most Rochester fans have ever known.

Over those four decades, Stevens has called more than 3,350 Amerks games on 95.7 FM/950 AM The Fan Rochester, with stretches on NHL Network and SiriusXM Satellite Radio that extended the team's reach to national and international audiences. The league calls him the Dean of AHL Broadcasters. No single fact frames his standing in the organization more concisely than this: the press box at The Blue Cross Arena has carried his name since February 2023.

The AHL that Stevens joined prior to the 1986-87 season was a different league in almost every measurable way. His first game aired from the old Rochester War Memorial. Early road schedules took him to New Haven, Connecticut, Baltimore, and Hershey, with four Canadian city stops mixed in. The league now counts 32 franchises with footholds in Cleveland, Winnipeg, San Jose, and Chicago. Stevens narrated all of it, including Calder Cup championship runs that remain fixed points in franchise memory. Amerks Vice President of Business Operations Chad Buck put the institutional weight of that plainly: "No other person in the history of our organization has been more synonymous with Amerks hockey than Don Stevens. For four decades, Don has narrated some of the most unforgettable moments in team history, which to this day have been immortalized by his unique and distinctive call."

Among those calls: November 8, 2024, when Stevens described a 6-3 win over the Hartford Wolf Pack that gave Rochester its 2,500th regular-season franchise victory. Only the Hershey Bears had reached that milestone before the Amerks. Fifteen years earlier, Stevens had been behind the microphone for the 2,000th win, at a time when Rochester was only the second AHL team and eighth North American hockey club to reach that number. The broadcaster who called the team's first game of his tenure was also the one narrating its biggest institutional thresholds.

The 40 seasons with the Amerks are only part of the inventory. From 1996 to 2009, Stevens simultaneously served as the play-by-play voice of the Rochester Rhinos, calling three A-League championships in 1998, 1999, and 2001, the 1999 U.S. Open Cup, and 14 consecutive playoff appearances for the now-defunct soccer club. In 1998, he covered an Amerks game and a Rhinos championship game on the same calendar day, a logistical circumstance that says something essential about his constitution. He was inducted into the Rhinos' Hall of Fame in 2016. His work extended internationally as well, including coverage at the prestigious Spengler Cup. Within the Amerks organization, Stevens served not only as the broadcast voice but as public relations director, television host, and radio talk show host at various points in his career. He also founded the AHL Broadcasters/Writers Association and served as its president.

The formal recognition arrived in steady intervals. Stevens was inducted into the Amerks Hall of Fame in 2011 as the 50th member and only the second broadcaster in franchise history to receive that honor. He won the AHL's James H. Ellery Memorial Award, the league's highest media distinction, twice, with his second win coming after the 2012-13 season, his 27th with the team. The Rochester Press-Radio Club presented him the Gary Smith and George Beahon Sports Media Excellence Award three times, most recently in May 2024. He entered the Frontier Field Walk of Fame in the media category in 2003 and was named 2020 Sportsperson of the Year by the Rochester St. Patrick's Day Parade Committee.

AHL President and CEO Scott Howson captured the less quantifiable dimension of it when Stevens announced his retirement on September 26, 2025: "There is something uniquely special about the relationship between a team's broadcaster and its fans."

Stevens framed his own exit with the honesty that defined his broadcasts. "There are so many mixed emotions running through me that I don't quite know what to think or feel," he said. "But what I do know, as I approach my 58th year of broadcasting and 40th season in Rochester, is that I am truly humbled and blessed by the immense support I have had and still receive in my career. I plan on spending the upcoming season honoring and thanking all of you for what has been an incredible journey over the years. Here's to one more year, and, of course, Go Amerks." The response exceeded anything he had seen in nearly six decades of work. "I've received well-wishes from all over the country and hockey world, from friends and acquaintances I haven't seen for decades," Stevens said, "and the tributes from other teams around the league is something I have never seen before."

The numbers Stevens leaves behind are staggering in their accumulation: 40 seasons, more than 3,350 games called, two Ellery Awards, dual Hall of Fame memberships with the Amerks and the Rhinos, and one press box in Rochester that will carry his name long after his final broadcast.

The comparison to Sam Rosen, the New York Rangers broadcaster who retired in April 2025 after his own 40-year run, is the kind of historical alignment that only appears when a sport is stable enough to produce lasting institutions. Two consecutive seasons losing two 40-year hockey voices marks a genuine shift in how the game gets heard.

For the ceremony, the Amerks created a fan package called The Don: $40 for two lower-level seats, two hot dogs, and two sodas, available through the team's official website. The occasion carried added historical resonance: Stevens' final season aligns with the Amerks' 70th AHL anniversary and the league's own 90th, a convergence Buck called "only fitting."

Road games throughout his final 2025-26 campaign were handled by Andrew Mossbrooks, who will take over the primary broadcast duties starting next season. The Don Stevens Press Box will remain above the Blue Cross Arena ice. His Hall of Fame plaque stays on the wall. The Amerks have constructed an architecture around his legacy that outlasts the tenure itself.

For a native of Wainwright, Alberta, who spent nearly 58 years behind a microphone and grew his career from a Rochester War Memorial press box to the Spengler Cup stage, the only thing the building has never heard him fill is the silence that comes next.