Alison Lukan is an American

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...

broadcaster and sportswriter. She is currently an analyst on

Root Sports Northwest ROOT SPORTS Northwest (stylized as ROOT SPORTS Northwest) is an American regional sports network owned as a 60/40 joint venture between the Seattle Mariners and Warner Bros. Discovery respectively, the latter of which operates it through its spo ...

for the

Seattle Kraken The Seattle Kraken are a professional ice hockey team based in Seattle. The Kraken compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Pacific Division in the Western Conference and began play during the league's 2021–22 season. ...

. Lukan has previously written for ''

The Athletic ''The Athletic'' is a subscription-based sports website that provides national and local coverage in 47 North American cities as well as the United Kingdom. ''The Athletic'' also covers national stories from top professional and college sports ...

'' about the

Columbus Blue Jackets The Columbus Blue Jackets (often simply referred to as the Jackets) are a professional ice hockey team based in Columbus, Ohio. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division in the Eastern Conference, ...

and about Ohio State Buckeyes men's and women's hockey. She contributes "Analytics with Alison" articles for the Kraken for the

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

's official website.

Early life and education

Lukan grew up in

Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and t ...

. She attended the

University of Richmond The University of Richmond (UR or U of R) is a private liberal arts college in Richmond, Virginia. It is a primarily undergraduate, residential institution with approximately 4,350 undergraduate and graduate students in five schools: the School ...

, where she received a bachelor's degree in 1996 from the Jepson School of Leadership Studies. For two years, she performed as the

mascot A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fi ...

of the

Richmond Spiders The Richmond Spiders represent the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia. The Spiders compete in the Division I FCS of the National Collegiate Athletic Association as a member of the Atlantic 10 Conference for most sports. The Spider na ...

Career

Lukan has worked for

Fox Sports Ohio Bally Sports Ohio is an American regional sports network owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group and is operated as an affiliate of Bally Sports. The channel broadcasts regional coverage of sports events in the state of Ohio, with a focus on professio ...

. She joined ''The Athletic'' in 2017 to cover the Columbus Blue Jackets. She gained attention for her technically savvy approach to

sports analytics Sports analytics are a collection of relevant, historical, statistics that can provide a competitive advantage to a team or individual. Through the collection and analyzation of these data, sports analytics inform players, coaches and other staff in ...

, including attendance at hockey analytics conferences and teaching herself R. She organized the Columbus Blue Jackets Hockey Analytics Conference and has been nicknamed the "analytics queen" for being one of the few visible women in her profession. She has co-hosted ''Too Many Men'', a women-run podcast about hockey. since February 2020 Lukan joined the Seattle Kraken's broadcast team for its inaugural season. She writes articles for the team's official website, provides analysis on the radio, and presents

data visualization Data and information visualization (data viz or info viz) is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the graphic representation of data and information. It is a particularly efficient way of communicating when the data or information is num ...

s on

's coverage during pre-game, intermission, and post-game segments. For road games starting on March 5, 2022, she joined

John Forslund John Forslund is an American sports announcer who is the television play-by-play announcer of the Seattle Kraken. He had previously filled the same role for the Carolina Hurricanes and was with the team since 1991 (when the team was the Hartford W ...

as an analyst in the television broadcast booth for the Kraken while primary analyst J. T. Brown was in

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

protocols. The Kraken announced in August 2022 that Lukan would return to the broadcast team during the 2022–23 season.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lukan, Alison Seattle Kraken announcers American women sportswriters Sportswriters from Ohio American sports studio analysts University of Richmond alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Living people