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DULUTH — Bulldogs hockey sounds different when the two men describing it have spent much of their lives around the game in Duluth.
Zach Schneider has spent nearly two decades learning how to tell a sports story on television. Jason Watt spent years learning how to prevent the other team from scoring, first as a defenseman and later as a coach.
Put them together high above the ice at AMSOIL Arena and the University of Minnesota Duluth has a television combination that fits the program particularly well — one broadcaster describing what is happening and one former Bulldog explaining why.
Schneider and Watt are the television voices of UMD men's hockey on MY9 Sports, a partnership that has become increasingly familiar to Bulldogs fans at a time when the production surrounding the games has become considerably more sophisticated.
MY9 has been the television home of UMD athletics since 2010 and is in the midst of a multiyear agreement with the university. The station's 2026-27 schedule again includes men's and women's hockey, football, volleyball and men's and women's basketball, while Bulldog Productions and KBJR continue building a production operation that UMD says has been named a finalist seven times over the past two years at the Sports Video Group College Summit for its men's and women's hockey coverage.
For all the cameras, replays, graphics and technology involved, however, a hockey telecast still ultimately depends on the people talking while the puck is moving.
That is where Schneider and Watt fit.
Schneider is the traffic cop. He identifies players, follows the puck, supplies the score and time, moves viewers through stoppages and raises his voice when the game demands it without trying to make every rush sound like Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.
Watt watches another game inside the game.
A former Bulldogs defenseman, he sees spacing, defensive-zone coverage, puck support, stick position, gaps between forwards and defensemen and the little decisions that can turn what appears to be an ordinary possession into a scoring chance five seconds later.
That difference in perspective is the strength of the pairing.
Schneider tells viewers what they are seeing. Watt can tell them what they might have missed.
For an audience in Duluth, that matters.
This is not a market where hockey needs much explanation. Many of the people watching UMD played the game, coached it, raised children in it or have followed Bulldogs hockey long enough to remember games at the Duluth Arena before the DECC and AMSOIL Arena existed. A television analyst can neither talk down to that audience nor assume every viewer understands the mechanics of a weak-side rotation or why a defenseman deliberately gives up several feet of ice through the neutral zone.
Watt's background gives him unusual credibility in that role.
A Duluth native, Watt played defense for Minnesota Duluth and played through the 1994-95 season. He appeared in 21 games that year, finishing with one assist and 21 penalty minutes. Before his UMD career, he also played junior hockey with the Madison/Wisconsin Capitols organization.
His connection to Duluth hockey hardly ended when his college playing career did.
Watt spent years coaching in the community, including multiple seasons as an assistant with the Duluth Marshall boys hockey program. He was on Brendan Flaherty's Hilltoppers staff during state tournament seasons and later served in a leadership role with the Duluth Amateur Hockey Association.
All of that comes with him into the booth.
A defenseman tends to watch hockey differently than a forward. Defensemen spend much of their careers seeing the entire rink in front of them. They read forechecks. They make the first pass out of the defensive zone. They decide when to hold the offensive blue line and when to retreat. They know how quickly one bad angle can turn into an odd-man rush.
Watt can bring those instincts to a replay and make a complicated sequence understandable without turning the broadcast into a coaching clinic.
Schneider arrives from the other direction.
A Duluth native and Marshall School graduate, Schneider attended the College of St. Scholastica before building his career in local television. He began at KBJR in 2007 as an intern and reporter and eventually became sports director, spending approximately a decade at the station before leaving full-time television in 2018. He continued broadcasting Bulldogs hockey, however, maintaining a connection to the game even as his primary career changed.
Today Schneider is the public relations director for Grandma's Marathon while continuing as MY9's play-by-play voice for UMD hockey.
There is value in that dual career.
Schneider spends his working life communicating information, dealing with media and understanding how stories are presented. On hockey nights, the subject changes but many of the fundamentals do not: know the material, communicate clearly, react quickly and never lose track of the larger story while dozens of smaller things are happening at once.
Calling hockey play-by-play might be the toughest assignment in sports broadcasting.
Baseball allows pauses. Football resets after virtually every play. Basketball offers frequent whistles and predictable possessions.
Hockey keeps moving.
Players change on the fly. The puck disappears behind bodies and along the boards. A broadcaster may begin describing a breakout at one end of the rink and, within seconds, have to identify the player finishing a two-on-one at the other.
There is little time to recover from a missed number or search a roster.
Schneider's familiarity with UMD is an enormous advantage. He has called Bulldogs teams with substantially different identities, watched players arrive as freshmen and leave as NHL prospects, and worked through an era that included national championships, Hobey Baker Award winners and some of the most consequential games in program history.
Watt represents a more recent evolution of that broadcast team.
Their reach has extended beyond Bulldogs hockey.
When Duluth hosted games in the pre-tournament series leading into the 2026 IIHF World Junior Championship, USA Hockey selected Schneider for play-by-play on the local television broadcasts, with Watt and former Bulldog Judd Medak serving as color commentators. The games featured the United States, Finland and Germany and were carried in Duluth and simulcast by FOX 9 in the Twin Cities.
That was another indication of how far what once might have been considered a strictly local broadcast operation has developed.
UMD's hockey telecasts now exist in two worlds. They remain hometown broadcasts, delivered by people who know the program and community, but they are also streamed to viewers far beyond Duluth and occasionally distributed into other television markets.
The challenge is preserving the first while meeting the technical and editorial expectations of the second.
Schneider and Watt make that easier because neither needs to manufacture a connection to the product. Watt wore the sweater. Schneider grew up in the market, covered its teams as a sports journalist and has spent years behind the microphone.
Neither needs to pretend a November conference game is bigger than it is, and neither needs a briefing sheet to understand what North Dakota coming to Duluth means to Bulldogs fans.
That familiarity also helps during the less glamorous stretches of a season. Not every weekend produces an overtime winner or championship-level drama. Sometimes the Bulldogs are protecting a two-goal lead in the third period. Sometimes they are struggling through a six-game stretch. Sometimes the most important play is a blocked shot, a successful penalty kill or a freshman defenseman making the smart play off the glass instead of trying to force a pass through the middle.
Those are the nights when good hockey broadcasting becomes especially valuable.
The 2026-27 season provides another long runway for the partnership. UMD opened the season Friday night with a 7-4 victory over Long Island at AMSOIL Arena and plays LIU again Saturday before a schedule that eventually brings Minnesota, Denver, North Dakota, St. Thomas and the rest of the NCHC calendar through Duluth.
There will be goals Schneider gets to raise his voice for and defensive breakdowns Watt gets to diagram verbally. There will be long replay reviews, strange bounces, disputed penalties and nights when the Bulldogs make the game look simple.
The best broadcast teams eventually become part of the rhythm of a season. Viewers may not consciously think about who is talking until something memorable happens and the call becomes attached to the memory.
That is the territory Schneider and Watt now occupy. One grew up professionally describing Duluth sports. The other once stood on the Bulldogs blue line trying to control them.
Now they sit side by side above the same sheet of ice, with Schneider calling the game UMD fans can see and Watt helping them see the game they might otherwise miss.
